A Fool's Chance
by WrathOfDeadguy
Summary: Penny Clairmont has been fighting for years to escape her criminal past. The last thing she needed was for her life to get even more complicated... but after a deadly battle with Vanduul raiders, she may find there is only one choice she can live with.
1. Chapter 00

**A Fool's Chance**

 **by Wrath** _ **Of** _ **Deadguy**

 **April 27, 2944—Elysium**

Fresh damage reports blazed red across Penny Clairmont's HUD, reminding her about the Scythe on her tail—as if the impact of its plasma cannon wasn't reminder enough. The little scaly prick had been glued there chewing on her thrusters since he slagged her turret, and she was running out of options fast... the mains were barely functional; she could feel them pulse and whine through her ship's battered hull. There was no way she was going to get the distance she needed to...

"Nel, shake this guy or we're scrap!" Matt Wahl's forceful baritone jolted her out of her headspace. _Gotta kill it fast._ There was only one thing she could do with her turret gone. She'd tried it a few times, but had never really needed to... _Hell with it._

"We're not done yet! Hang on to something!"

Penny flipped her starboard engine and sent the _Fool's Chance_ into a wild death spiral, throwing the Cutlass end for end and giving her—for just long enough—a clean shot at the bastard on her six. Her lips curled into a snarl as she impaled the Scythe on the last of her missiles, and she crowed in satisfaction when it blossomed into a fireball before flashing back out of view. The engines screamed, overheated, and threatened to quit, but she'd bought some breathing room—she hoped.

Penny and swung around wide, away from the worst of the action. There were still a few friendlies out there, but what little organization they'd had was gone now—it was every ship for herself. Some of the escort units had seemed pretty disciplined; maybe they were doing better, but the independent pilots were falling apart. _Because of twits like me who think they're better off without authority. Congrats, Nels, you got what you wanted after all. Was it everything you hoped for?_ Penny sighed and fell in aft of the _Grayson_ , a Constellation which had been running alongside the transports... her smuggler captain had offered to split his score with Penny if she'd throw the customs inspectors off his scent when they arrived. She wondered if he still cared about all that when she saw that the _Grayson_ was just as torn up as her own boat.

" _Grayson, Chance._ You've got a fuel leak aft starboard. Shut down your number three engine or you'll blow it off, copy?" There was no answer. "Matt, they alive over there?"

"Power and RCS... somebody's still flying her. Get me up front, I'll try to get his attention."

She edged forward to bring the _Chance_ nearly canopy-to-canopy with the bigger ship. Matt pointed his flashlight and signaled, but there was still no answer. The lighting flickered, silhouetting the lone figure still manning _Grayson_ 's helm, but he was motionless save for an arm on the flight stick. _Poor bastard's gone home_ , she thought. _Might as well be dead._

"Heads up, Nel. Three incoming, ten seconds!"

"Grayson, more scalies coming! We could use some help!"

"Slag _his_ ass! _Move_ this thing!"

She didn't need to be told twice—running was hopeless with her boosters shot out, but she still had guns and she meant to use them. _Fool's Chance_ met the Vanduul head on, shredding one of the fragile alien raiders with her neutron guns as the other two blazed past stitching lines of fire across the lamed Cutlass' unshielded flank. The _Chance_ shuddered and groaned, but held together and answered smartly when Penny swung her back around in pursuit. Out of the corner of her eye she saw _Grayson_ take a missile in her damaged nacelle and blow apart, her forward hull spewing atmosphere and twirling off into space—six million creds and three lives gone in the space of a few heartbeats. _Chance_ paid her dead comrade's blood debt with a storm of particle fire; a second Scythe exploded in a satisfying shower of flaming scrap. _"Bleed you scaly assholes!"_ She'd never seen anything like the Vanduul—not even her father's pirates measured up to the cold brutality of what was happening around her. They hadn't even tried to disable the transports to loot them—they'd demanded no surrender, and they were showing no mercy. They weren't human, and it showed in the way they flew. They must have lost dozens of fighters, but they never stopped coming. They never stopped killing...

"Two more incoming! Check—missile trace!"

"Countermeasures!"— _Stars, we can't dodge it!_

"Dry! Brace yourself!"

Penny howled at the void and threw the _Chance_ spinning in a desperate bid to shake the incoming ordinance, but her wings were clipped and the missiles were too fast—the ship rocked and angry red lights exploded across her displays. Vanduul warheads gouged out thrusters and cannons, leaving them crippled and defenseless. The lone survivor of the first wave lined up for another pass—she saw the muzzle flash—a moment later she felt the heat, even through her vac suit, as a lance of searing plasma slashed through the cockpit somewhere behind her. All the displays went out; the _Chance_ bucked and heaved—a second and third shot struck home. She wrenched the stick over hard. Nothing happened. The stars kept spinning.

"Matt! I've got no control! Take..." her voice trailed off as she twisted around. The plasma blast that had cut her control lines had blown clean through the _Chance_ , taking Matt off at the shoulders on its way through the cockpit. She squeezed her eyes shut—only for a moment. _She_ was still alive. Still alive. She was _still alive,_ and that was how she was going to _stay._ There'd be time to mourn later.

Her ship—her home—was as dead as her copilot. A few of the thrusters were still firing, trying futilely to arrest their spin, but both sets of controls were useless and Penny couldn't even call up a status display to find out where the fault was. Her stomach churned—gravity was failing now, too. It was time to go; with a half-muttered curse she yanked on the ejection handle.

Gravity failed and so did the ejector—Penny gave the handle another sharp yank, but to no more useful end. The ship's spin threw her forward against her crash harness; she tugged the release and suddenly found herself face-down against the canopy. It wasn't a violent spin, at least, but the pain in her side told her that she'd cracked a rib and that was going to make getting to the hatch a copper plated bitch.

She took it one hand over the other, trying to block out of her mind the possibility of another volley of enemy fire finishing the _Chance_ off before she could get clear. The climb past Matt's headless body seemed to take an eternity—that, too, she had to shut down fast before it froze her. She tried to tell herself that he would've wanted her to leave him, that he would have left her... but if she'd had a way to get him out, she'd have done it. There wasn't enough time.

The hatch was stuck fast, and it wasn't hard to see why. The latch plate was fused in a solid mass—she just kept climbing right past it towards the cargo bay and thanked whatever lonely star was still shining on her that the bulkhead door still worked. She pulled herself through and into weightlessness—the hold was as torn up as the cockpit. She could see a whirling starscape through some of the larger breaches as she glided past the center of spin and thudded into the tail ramp with a landing only a sack of bricks could have called graceful. Penny didn't even bother to try the ramp controls—she wrapped herself in a loose cargo net and clipped it to the ramp, then shut her eyes tight. _Goodbye, baby. I'm sorry._ She kicked the explosive bolt release as hard as she could.

A horse fell bodily on her chest, and for a moment Penny saw stars of a different sort... and then she saw the _Fool's Chance_ —and Matt—spinning lazily away, streaming fuel and debris, smaller and smaller. There was no final explosion; the Vanduul bastards who'd slaughtered her friends made one last pass to confirm their kill and moved off to find someone else to murder. The dying Cutlass spiraled away until she was just another gleaming star... Penny shook herself back into the moment. There were more immediate concerns.

 _Like air._ Without the supply built into the ejection seat, she had whatever was left in her suit's reserves and then it was curtains. She wondered if it might not have been better to stay with the _Chance_ , but that was done and past now—she still had an e-beacon, and she flipped it on while she fumbled for the air gauge. _An hour's worth, give or take._

Penny stifled the urge to cut herself loose from her tail ramp lifeboat and look around. The telltale flashes of laser and plasma fire winked at her from among the stars, but she couldn't make out any ships. She wasn't sure if she was still in the middle of the furball or whether she'd drifted clear while trying to get off the _Chance_ , not that she'd have been able to do much about it in any case with only a laser pistol and a boot knife. She squinted, trying to pick out the dwindling speck of the _Chance_ 's wreckage, but it was too far away to see now. Her only home and her only friend, drifting off together into the endless void... and she'd gotten them into this in the first place. _"The best score we've ever had." Yeah, Nels. What a crock of shit—but you knew he'd come along, didn't you? Just like every other time you ever picked a fight bigger than your scrawny ass could handle._ Blinking back tears, she checked her suit beacon; she had to make sure it was transmitting. Had to do everything she could to stay _alive._ The only thing worse than knowing she'd gotten Matt killed would be pissing on his memory by letting herself die too. He'd never forgive her for that...


	2. Chapter 01

**Chapter 1**

 _ **Two years earlier—Terra**_

Turbulence buffeted the _Fool's Chance_ as Penny guided the ship down through the atmosphere towards Quasi. She wasn't in the best mood ever—Advocacy had given her and Matt hell from the second they'd cleared the jump from Goss, despite their having scrubbed the ship from top to bottom of any indication that she'd had any life before she'd passed into the ownership of one Penelope Clairmont. She suspected that it might have something to do with her captain's name.

The first time they'd been boarded, they'd nearly been arrested on sight because of their substantial tattoo collections, some of which Penny was certain were in somebody's database somewhere. Probably not because of anything that she or Matt—well, anything that _she_ had ever done, at least. Probably. It was hard to be sure without actually asking the badge-wielding bastards, and all things being equal Penny wanted to have as little to do with the Advocacy as possible going forward.

She was really hoping that nobody would call them on her when she landed. _If_ she landed.

 _Why am I doing this again?_ They could have more easily picked any other place in the 'Verse to make a fresh start... Matt had suggested somewhere nice and safe, like _Tiber._ He'd only been half joking. Coming here was entirely Penny's idea; after all, she had family on Terra, of a sort. Then again, considering how she'd left things with the _rest_ of her family...

"Quasi control, this is Captain Clairmont in the _Fool's Chance_ , I'm still waiting on that flight path."

If they made her wait much longer, she was pretty sure she'd have to just pick the most convenient empty landing pad... or create her own. That would be... _fun._ She cast a look of bone-deep frustration over her shoulder at Matt, who was nonchalantly leaning against the inner hull with a hand on one of the grab rails just in case. He looked as though he should be moving more, the way the ship was bouncing around, but he'd made something of an art form of defying physics and common sense. He grinned back and shrugged. She flipped him off and spun the waist thrusters, which at least made the smug bastard stumble. Satisfied, Penny turned her attention back to the still-dead comm display.

 _I get it, asshole... I'm not important enough to waste your time. Now give me my clearance and approach path before I land the_ Chance _on your fucking control tower._

"Quasi control, _Chance._ My altitude is _not_ increasing. Flight path, please?"

If this was some Advocacy suit's way of telling her she wasn't welcome, she'd gotten the message after the second 'customs check.' This was really getting juvenile. Had she been back... _where I came from_ , she corrected herself halfway through thinking about _home_ again. It wasn't home. Not anymore. But if she'd been back there she'd just have powered her guns and the twit on the other end would have stopped jerking her around. If she did so here, now, she was fairly certain that the _Chance_ would be landing rather sooner and in several more pieces than planned.

" _Fool's Chance_ , Quasi control," her headset crackled at last—and to his great credit, the speaker on the other end managed to sound thoroughly bored rather than amused or defensive at her not-at-all-masked irritation. "Uploading flight path now. You have been cleared to land at Ostler Transstellar, pad C. Do not deviate from your assigned path. Over."

" _Thank_ you, control, for taking the time out of your _busy_ schedule." She cut the link. "Jackass." The new flight path projected on her HUD... and she noticed that it was timestamped a full minute before traffic control had given it to her. She muttered something that was unrepeatable even by _her_ standards and wrenched the stick over to get the _Chance_ on course before the deviation registered on anyone's screens down below. Unless it had already, in which case she was looking at a rather large fine.

 _Figures. Sons of bitches couldn't find anything else on me, so they made something up instead._ She was trying to be good. She really was. It was just very, very hard to not break laws when the law all but _told_ her that it didn't want her to follow it.

The last few minutes of the trip were, thankfully, uneventful. The turbulence subsided, Matt finally deigned to sit down—although whether or not he'd strapped in was questionable—and Penny guided her filthy, beat-up Cutlass smoothly down to the surface of Ostler Transstellar's impeccably clean landing pad.

"Now for the welcoming committee," Matt quipped, indicating a single figure approaching from what Penny assumed must be the administration complex. The place was a lot smaller than she'd expected, but that was... actually a little reassuring. She blew a lock of inky black hair from her eye and unstrapped.

 _Time to go meet the folks._

* * *

David Ostler wasn't normally a micromanager. One of Frank's people would normally have handled visitors, but there was a slight problem at the moment relating to Frank not _having_ people anymore. David also didn't normally put his personal stamp on every incoming flight, but _Tess_ didn't have any people anymore, either. Not in a departmental sense, anyway. Since they were both in the hangar, Ursula was in the city, Ben was home, and Kevin was offworld, that left David. The CEO of Ostler Transstellar Shipping, GmbH was, at least for the moment, filling the role of company receptionist and greeter. It was... an interesting change of pace.

'Interesting' was, incidentally, exactly the word he would have used to describe the ship that had just landed. It was readily identifiable as a 2929 Drake Interplanetary Cutlass, but beyond that he was not entirely clear on its specifications. The pockmarks and patchwork of different colored hull panels made it somewhat more difficult to classify. The... _unique_ painted decorations all over the ship didn't really help either, but they were certainly cheery and colorful. The nose of the craft sported a large winking smiley face flanked on one side by a thumbs up and on the other by a pair of dice.

He stopped at the edge of the landing pad, about ten meters from the hull—it was still throwing off a great deal of heat, so he knew right off that his visitors, whoever they were, had come from offworld somewhere. There was some movement in the cockpit, then nothing for nearly half a minute—then the ship's tail ramp descended.

Two individuals who looked like nothing so much as a couple of bloodthirsty pirates stepped out. He looked at them; they looked at him. The shorter of the two, a dark-haired woman in a sleeveless jacket and cargo pants, touched her male companion—similarly attired with the chief distinction of a bowler hat and a thick beard—on the shoulder. The latter nodded and began looking over the ship's landing gear while the woman headed David's way. Not quite sure what else to do, David held a hand up in greeting.

"Hello," he began, "welcome to Ostler Transstellar Shipping. My name is David Ostler—what can I do for you this evening?"

"David Ostler?" the woman asked, raising an eyebrow as she did.

"Yes..."

"You're Victoria Ostler's brother?" The question caused what was left of David's hair to stand on end. He crossed his arms in a probably futile effort to conceal his discomfort. He hadn't seen Vicky in a long time—a very long damn time. Given whom she'd run off with all those years ago...

"Yes," he said after a long and pointless moment of trying to size up his visitor.

"My name is Penelope." she said with a little shrug. "Clairmont."

David's jaw came unhinged.

* * *

Penny wasn't sure whether she was the most uncomfortable person in the room or not. David Ostler was sitting behind a large desk—which her brain just couldn't quite believe was real hardwood—with his fingers steepled and a deep furrow in his brow. Frank Ostler was hovering around the chair to her right; he looked unsure of whether he wanted to sit down or not. Tess Ostler, the youngest of the three siblings, was glaring intently at an empty point on the horizon somewhere beyond the office window. None of them seemed to be particularly happy to see Penny. She fidgeted on the synthleather couch, filling the silence with unnerving squeaky noises every time she moved.

"That's... remarkable," David said at last, and sounded totally exhausted in the saying. Frank nodded agreement. Tess neither moved nor spoke. Penny shrugged. Frank shook his head and opened his mouth.

"It is what it is." she said before he could speak.

"It's made up, Dave," Frank said softly. "Has to be."

"Look," she snapped, "get me sequenced if you think I'm shitting you."

"Remember that you're the one who offered," Frank returned. Penny made a face at him and he finally sat down.

"You have to understand," David said carefully, looking straight at where he should have met Penny's eyes—but she was looking at Tess, wondering what the issue was _there._ David paused for her attention to return, then gave up and continued. "We haven't seen Vicky in years. Since before you were born."

"But you knew my name."

"She sent a few pictures and a video about twenty years ago."

At that, Tess whirled around and impaled Penny with the most terrifying glare she'd ever seen on a person not also trying to murder her.

"Who the _hell_ is this? Where does she get off coming here? _Now?_ " That was the extent of her aunt's contribution to the discussion; Tess stalked out of the office and slammed the door. Penny tossed a thumb over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

"Tess was born a year after you were," David explained with a sigh. "She never met our sister. Or, for that matter," he added a moment later, "you."

"And that's _my_ fault?"

"I think..." he paused, rubbed his chin, and sighed again. "I'm trying to think of a... diplomatic way to say this."

"I look like a diplomat?"

"No."

"So spit it out, huh?"

"When she was very young, she asked about Vicky—and you, but mostly Vicky—a lot. Mother and Father decided, and I agreed, that it was better to tell her that you had both died."

Penny almost couldn't suppress a bitter laugh. For all she knew her mother really _was_ dead—she'd disappeared about the same time David said she'd sent the pictures. Leaving Penny with her father. She hadn't heard from her mother in as many years as the rest of the family.

"Yeah. Great. So why's she pissed at _me?_ "

"I think it might be more that she's... ah, upset _about_ you. You know, your mother didn't leave home on particularly good terms."

 _Neither did I,_ Penny thought. _Guess it runs in the family._

"Your father was not the match our family hoped for. He was..."

"I know what he is." That elicited a wince from both uncles. Well, they were _thinking_ it at the very least. It wasn't like Penny didn't look the part, but she'd just told them who she'd been raised by, if not in so many words, and that had probably not helped her credibility much. Which was... to be expected, when she put a stray thought to it. Quentin Clairmont was many things—charismatic and handsome being the traits she suspected had lured Victoria Ostler to his side—but the usual description she'd heard included a fair few unkind and entirely accurate words regarding his personality and career choices. He'd been a wonderful father as far as the standards of people who ran in certain circles went, but since those certain circles were full of pirates, slavers, and drug lords, that probably didn't count for much.

"Okay," she said when the room had been dead for too long to bear, "I get it. You don't trust me. You _shouldn't._ I wouldn't. So I get sequenced, I give you the results, we go from there. Slick?"

"Why did you come here?" asked Frank. It was a brutally direct question, if a fair one. Frank didn't look much happier to see Penny than Tess had been, but he seemed much more likely to let her speak her piece before he made a final judgment. David she still couldn't read. She considered the question for a period of time that she thought would be convincing, even though she'd had the answer in mind before she made planetfall. Then she leaned forward in the chair and locked eyes with David—with her uncle—behind that massive desk of his.

"I want a job," she said simply.

* * *

 **The Present—May 12, 2944—Saisei, Centauri**

David found her in the impound hangar where Provenza told him the Navy salvage teams had taken the handful of wrecks that had been left mostly intact. Penny looked a decade older when she heard his footsteps and looked up to meet his worried stare. Her eyes were dark and sunken; she smelled like she hadn't bathed or changed in a week—and somewhere in the melange of odor he was certain he'd caught a whiff of something strong and alcoholic. The bottle was still on the floor beside her, lying where it had fallen when she drained it... but if she was heavily drunk she was hiding it better than the fact that she'd _been_ drinking. He decided right away not to press the matter and pulled up a box to sit beside her.

The _Fool's Chance_ lay a few dozen meters away, charred and broken but still recognizable. She'd probably fly again with enough work—but he could see from Penny's face that her heart just wasn't in the beat-up old Cutlass she'd once been so proud of. She was mourning the ship as much as her lost friend—a man whom David admitted with some regret that he'd underestimated. Matt Wahl, whatever else the man might've been, had stood with his niece when she most needed him, and he had paid for her life with his own. That alone raised him above whatever he'd done when he was a pirate, in David's estimation.

"I keep expecting him to stick his head out that hatch," Penny said at last, showing that her mind and David's had drifted to the same subject. "He'd be pissed about me letting her get all fucked up like this. She was his home too."

 _Ah, so that's it._ That little ship had been her home, or the next best thing to it, since before she'd put down on the landing pad at OTS almost two years ago. She'd never taken a local flat when she was planetside. But a ship was always _more_ than just a home, especially for someone who lived aboard her—she was an extension of the self, a manifestation of free will and the ability to travel wherever that will could take her.

David laid a hand on Penny's shoulder—felt her shiver, as though she were fighting an urge to recoil from the touch. She'd never been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but that was when Matt was there for her. He'd been her anchor, and now he was gone. All she had left now was the family that had given up on her years before they'd ever met her. That was David's to put right. For any of his other pilots, save for Tess, he'd have sent a ride home and met them at the spaceport with his condolences when they got back. Instead he'd jumped in the _Vanilla May_ with Ben Lancaster as soon as he got the news and hauled an empty hold across seven systems to sit here in a dark hangar with a niece he still only barely knew after two eventful years.

"I'm sorry" was all he could put into words. He wanted to tell her that he knew how she felt, or that it would get easier—both would have been lies. He'd seen people die, but not like that... and even _those_ faces came back to him every time he looked into the void between worlds.

"We should go," he offered some time later. "Get you cleaned up a bit. Hot meal, shower."

"Will it help?"

He shook his head. "Nothing will. Not today. But it'll get you in motion—that's what you need right now. I know."

Penny shrugged. It was a while longer before she finally got to her feet—she cast one more long, sad look at the _Chance_ , sighed, and hoisted her bag. "Don't need anything else here," she said to no one in particular. David nodded, stood, and struck an ambling pace that matched Penny's dogged plodding as they headed for the door. Her pace quickened as she stepped onto the tarmac; it seemed that the past's grasp on her had loosened for a moment and now she wanted to put distance between herself and that wreck before it snared her again. David obliged and led the way to the hover he'd rented.

It felt like it should be raining, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky as he eased up out of the parking lot and into traffic, heading back towards the hotel. He'd thought briefly about quartering on the _May_ , but worried that Penny would feel less at ease aboard another ship than she would elsewhere. She obviously hadn't been staying with the rest of the survivors at the Navy barracks—but that wasn't surprising. She wasn't one for crowds at the best of times.

"We'll deal with the rest of the paperwork tomorrow," he said when at last he'd shown her to her room. "Just try to get some rest, alright? I'll be next door if you need anything." She nodded, but he could tell from the look in her eyes that rest was too tall an order.

* * *

The next morning saw Penny looking somewhat less like a used shop rag. She didn't feel altogether like herself wearing a three-piece suit, but the change, she admitted privately, was one she badly needed. Just being clean again was almost better than sleep—but her eyes still burned; her whole body ached from exhaustion. If David noticed her bloodshot eyes, though, he said nothing when he waved her to his table for breakfast.

"Thanks for these," she said as she sat down, gesturing at her clothes. She hadn't realized how badly she needed to feel clean until she'd stepped into the shower last night; she'd waited to open the package on the bed until after she emptied out the minibar and had cried herself dry when she found clean, _new_ clothes inside the box. She'd very briefly considered throwing out the things she'd pulled out of the _Chance_ before finally deciding that as much as it hurt now, she'd want the memories later. Still, it felt... not good, but _better_ to not be wearing all that baggage now. David had been right: she felt human again. For the first time in days she was sure she was going to get through all this—although the prospect of filling out insurance forms all afternoon was only marginally more appealing than sitting in the salvage hangar getting drunk again.

David only nodded in reply—he wasn't the type to bask in gratitude. He tapped a few things into his MobiGlas while Penny wolfed down a mammoth pile of eggs, mercifully waiting until they'd both finished eating to bring up the day's necessary business.

"We've got an appointment for ten," he said on the way out to the car. "I've already looked at the forms—everything's covered, so it should just be a matter of signing a few things."

That suited Penny just fine. She really didn't care about the particulars... she just wanted to get off the surface again; she'd never been comfortable with planetside life, and just then she'd never hated it more. She donned her jacket and flipped her hood up as soon as she was outside and got into the car without saying a word, but after only a few minutes a thought finally crept into her head that promised not to go away until she mentioned it.

"What about the _Chance_?" She assumed that David had come in one of the company ships, and none of them had a hold big enough to carry hers. She definitely didn't want to be here for a few weeks or a month until her ship was spaceworthy again, and she wasn't sure she'd want to spend the whole trip back alone in that cockpit even then.

"That's up to you," David replied with a little shrug. "We can book a transport to take her home, or have someone fly her back for you when the repairs are done. Or..."—he turned his head away from the hover's controls for a moment to look her in the eye—"I can line you up with a buyer. If you decide you'd rather move on."

That hadn't even crossed her mind, but now she wondered why. If she didn't want to be aboard the _Chance_ now, would she ever want to again? Wouldn't it be easier to just get a new ship, one that wouldn't feel so much like a half-filled grave? If she waited until the promised repairs were done, she knew she could buy a single-seater easily with the trade-in. It would be... _too easy,_ she realized with a start. _Too much like running away. Again._

"No," she said clearly, at length. "A transport or a pilot, whichever's cheaper." Nothing was stopping her from selling the _Chance_ later, if she wanted to, but she wasn't ready to move on quite yet. Perhaps she could convince David to loan her one of the company couriers until she could get in the right mind to make a final decision.


	3. Chapter 02

**Chapter 2**

 _She knew that she was dying. Her Mobiglas was ruined, and she couldn't even manage to roll over... there was no way to call for help. This was really it. Knowing what her father would do when his people found her corpse was little comfort, but she played his bloody vengeance out in her head anyway to take her mind off the pain. Everything hurt, but it was slowly fading... every shallow breath was a struggle, blowing bubbles through her nose in the pool of blood she lay in. Her own blood—most of it, anyway._

 _It was her own fault. She'd ignored the first rule—always watch your back. She'd gone alone to grab a few parts, and they'd been waiting for her. She'd given them a fight to remember, but even with a knife and a holdout pistol a thirteen year old girl was no match for half a dozen thugs. Even so, two of them lay on the deck not far away, still and cold. The others stood around her, wielding pipes and wrenches, dripping with blood. Everything dripping with blood. She couldn't believe she had that much inside her... or that she was still alive having lost so much. For how much longer? A hard-edged work boot thudded into her belly, but she couldn't even muster the strength to cry out._

"' _Ey, boyos," said a low, unfamiliar voice somewhere behind her. "Party's over. G'won home."_

" _Push off," sneered one of the thugs. "It ain't none of yours."_

" _I'm makin' it mine, slick? Less ya wan' lie wit yer boys there, g'won." There was the distinct sound of a plasma caster charging, followed by a few muttered curses. A shadow fell across her as a big man with a bigger gun casually stepped over her body, aiming it at the four thugs who were now backing slowly down the corridor._

" _It'sa fool thing it is," grated the one she'd taken to be the leader. "Ya gonna bleed, Wahl. Piss with Boss Hess' business? Ya gonna bleed. Jus' like the bitch."_

 _Dorian Hess. So he'd finally made his move. Her dimming vision flared red—she wasn't even important enough to have enemies of her own. They were just using her to get at her father. The big gun went off; the blast was muffled, far away through a red fog in a quickly shrinking world._

" _Don' make me waste the ammo," the voice said calmly. The remaining three turned and ran from their leader's smoking corpse._

 _The deck fell away- something squeezed her broken ribs, snatching away the cold and replacing it with fire. Her eyes snapped wide open, although her head refused to lift. The stranger was carrying her somewhere._

" _Keep breathin', kid. Just a li'l longer. Ya got a debt to pay."_

* * *

 **The Present—May 20** **th** **, 2944—Magnus**

Penny woke with a start, drenched in sweat and shaking. Her sealed bunk for a moment felt like a coffin—she slapped the overhead panel and rolled out into a pile on the deck. Her head darted around to make sure nobody had seen her in a panic... but the lights were dimmed; the _Vanilla May_ was on autopilot. Uncle David and his pilot were still in their bunks, sound asleep. She stilled her breath and smoothed out her hair, reached for her pants and the little bottle in the front pocket. She twirled it around, then popped the lid off and sank three pills down her throat. _Just enough to float—not enough to fly._

She waited until she could feel the edges soften before pulling her clothes on and heading forward. The light of a sun shone dimly through the portside windows; a quick glance at the master systems display told her that it was Magnus—still two jumps out from Terra, by the safest route. They'd completed the jump from Ellis on autopilot while they slept. There wasn't anything else worth looking at; Penny didn't particularly feel like stargazing. Not that there was much else to do. Uncle David was his usual unnervingly kind self, and Ben still hated her guts, so the conversation had worn thin by the second day of the trip back from Centauri and Penny had taken to hanging out in the cargo hold where at least she didn't have to deal with other people.

There was no way she was getting back to sleep, so instead Penny went aft to check out the Merlin. Ben had warned her to stay away from the snubfighter, as though she'd break it or something... had he bothered to ask, he'd have known that her father owned a few dozen of the things stolen from a Kruger factory shipment. Penny had thousands of hours in snubs—racing them had been a popular hobby, and while she was by no means the best, she'd always done pretty well on the haphazard racing 'courses' she and the other outlaw pilots set up in the debris field surrounding Ninevah station.

The cockpit was snug, but comfortable, and with the canopy closed it was the next best thing to absolutely silent inside with the little fighter's systems shut down. She closed her eyes and imagined herself whirling the tiny ship around, screaming at the stars... the vicious satisfaction of beating her father's goons on their own terms. _What was that asshole's name again?_ The one who'd threatened to kill her if she ever humiliated him again. _Vargas. Arrogant sack of shit._ Matt had tried to step in then, too, but she hadn't let him. There were some debts that had to be settled by the one who owed them. She'd left her guns off safe in the next race and blown his thrusters, then nudged his ship towards the minefield—forcing him to eject and beg her to give him a ride back in. That little stunt had cost her dearly, but neither Vargas nor anyone else had ever threatened her again.

 _I wonder what I'd lose if I ever went back._ The thought made her shudder. Quentin Clairmont, though otherwise a warm and attentive parent, had no tolerance whatsoever for betrayal. She'd be lucky if he settled for her whole hand this time. Even blood wasn't thick enough to shield her from retribution—not after what she and Matt had done when they left Ninevah. Penny sighed and climbed back out of the Merlin. There was no going back. That had never been the answer; she'd worked too hard to sever her ties with that life. But... now the one she'd adopted in its place was falling apart as well.

There was a small, yellow container in the cargo hold next to her duffel bag—the only freight aboard the _Vanilla May_. It was Matt's remains—such as they were, a little more than a kilo of ash and the few things he called his own. An ancient multitool, so old that it had to be adjusted manually; a brass medallion that bore some writing in a language Penny couldn't read; a small can of wax for his beard. His favorite hat was mingled with his ashes—even though there'd been no head to place it on, it hadn't seemed right to bury him without it. She pocketed the multitool, left the medallion, and closed the lid for the last time.

Now was as good a time as any—Penny took the container under her arm and climbed up to the starboard airlock. She extended it and stepped inside, laid the box and its grim contents inside, then stepped out and quickly cycled it. One last time, Matt flew off into the infinite black without her... one small cube of ash and echoed memory. That was how he'd have wanted it; the thought of being kept like some kind of twisted souvenir would have driven him up the bulkheads, and he'd have choked at the notion of anyone else pretending to mourn him. This was a better way—now the only one who knew his final resting place was the only one who cared. Maybe the box would be picked up by a scavenger in a few hundred years... let them try to figure out whose ashes they'd found with no name and no record. That, at least, would have put a smile on Matt's face; it was just the sort of prank he'd have pulled himself if he'd ever had the presence of mind to write a will. She erased the airlock's usage log just to be certain, then went forward.

There wasn't any alcohol in the _May's_ mess, so she took another couple of pills and crawled back into her bunk, hoping that it would be enough to put her out. It was probably too much to hope that dealing with Matt's ashes would make her sleep easy, but at least there was one more piece of business that no longer needed to be dealt with. One less question for her family of strangers to ask. One less debt to pay; that was the only way to find peace. One debt at a time until she'd paid the balance...

* * *

 _ **The Past**_ _ ** _ **—**_ Nine months before Elysium—September 2943—Deep Space.**_

Penny stared at the derelict freighter's elderly captain with a mixture of incredulity and rage. Four hours out of her way to reach this lousy wreck, and _what_ kind of thanks was she getting for it? Not a cut of the fully-laden Hull-C's cargo, that was for sure. Not anything at all, the way things were shaping up. The moment she'd stepped through the hatch, half a dozen pairs of hands had immediately leapt to whatever personal items on their owners happened to be the most valuable, as though clutching their treasures could ward off whatever trouble they thought Penny was here to cause.

"Fucksakes..." she slapped her forehead, grimaced, and took a deep breath so she wouldn't say something she'd _really_ regret. "I don't want your stuff, gramps, I'm here to give you a lift—y'know, a ride? To somewhere with working atmo?"

The terrified merchant looked at her like he might have a Vanduul who'd started reciting Shakespeare while sizing up his head for the roasting spit. Sure, she and Matt—and, yeah, the _Chance_ —looked a bit rough, but they'd hardly come in with guns drawn. Hell, she'd been having a pretty nice conversation with this vac-brain over the comms right up until she cracked the hatch seals... but evidently he didn't remember that. He was too busy sizing up her...

"Eyes up here, gramps." _This job sucks._ Helping people sounded great in theory, but it was a complete pain in the ass to have to convince every—single— _one_ that she wasn't a pirate out to steal their pocket change and leave them drifting. As though this lot had anything worth taking to begin with... _yeah, okay, I looked. Doesn't count unless I actually took something, right?_ She sighed and tried another approach.

"Look, we're here because you tripped a distress beacon. If you don't want our help, you can wait for the next ship. We'll report your position when we make port and hopefully someone should be out here in another day or so." She started towards the hatch. "That is, unless an _actual_ pirate shows up first." She reached out as though to grab the hatch and close it, and was completely unsurprised when the freighter captain motioned excitedly for her to stop.

"That... won't be necessary. Will it?"

"You tell me, pops. I'm not the one turning down a free ride because it wasn't a posh yacht picked me up." _Which, for the record, are usually owned by people who steal more than the best pirates dream of. And who'd never stoop to picking up hitch-hikers._ Penny could see the mental battle the old guy was having with himself over whether to trust her and Matt or take his chances and wait for the next passer-by. She was quickly running out of shits to give.

"Take the offer or stick around a while, man. It's _my_ delivery that's gonna be past due for stopping—I'm not gonna hang around while you decide."

She wasn't really going to cut loose and leave these idiots here—though a glance from Matt told her exactly what _he_ thought about the whole business. _If they're gonna treat us like lepers all the way there, let 'em rot,_ he'd have said if they were alone—perhaps not quite so eloquently. The small but growing part of her that was getting fed up with life on the level tended to agree with her old friend, but— _damn_ it—she _was_ going to try to be the better woman here. Predictably, the old guy made up his mind when she turned towards the airlock again.

"Wait... we'll come with you." His face was flushed red—with unholy terror or embarrassment, Penny couldn't tell.

"You sure you're not afraid we'll steal your MobiGlas and space you?" Better woman she might try to be; it was _still_ funny as hell to see the geezer's eyes fly open like that. He squeaked out an unconvincing laugh when he realized she was yanking his chain and hurried past her into the airlock. She waved at the others, exasperated, and finally they stopped cowering and started moving. _Great. Half a dozen terrified sheep crapping up my hold for ten or twelve hours. They'd better not mess up my couch._

Try as she might, though, Penny couldn't pretend it wasn't satisfying. That was half a dozen terrified sheep who'd at least be able to be terrified in the relative comfort of the _Chance_ instead of their dead, cold wreck. Maybe when all was said and done she'd be a little less terrifying to a few people out there, and that was what she'd been hoping for out here—wasn't it? The chance to make something better of herself?

 _This job still sucks_ , she thought as she cycled the airlock and herded her sheep aboard. They settled onto the couch and the jumpseats and, annoyingly, Penny's bunk, but she thought better of yelling at them and waved Matt up front so they could get underway. She caught a look of true sadness in the freighter captain's eyes as she sealed the hatch and demagnetized the seal—now that was something she could well understand. That hauler wasn't just the man's livelihood, it was his family's home... just like the _Chance_ was Penny's. Now he had to leave that home floating out here in the void, not knowing if he'd ever stand within its hull again. She gestured at the furnishings and gave him a silent little nod, hoping that he'd at least understand the sympathy of a fellow spacer.

Matt was whistling the refrain of some tune or other when Penny joined him up front, but he only knew a few of the notes and his whistle was worse than his singing voice. He was hunched over his console, and beckoned her over when he hear the hatch close. Matt had the sensors set to long scan with the Q-drive engaged—there was a contact at the very edge of their range, closing fast. Penny didn't need to be told what to look at: the other ship—and it _had_ to be a ship—was altering course to intercept.

"Now," said Matt with a lopsided smile, "what're the odds of that, I wonder?" Penny rolled her eyes at him and slid into the pilot's seat, cancelling the autopilot the moment she was strapped in. She didn't bother hailing the incoming ship; if its captain wanted to talk, then they'd be hailing her any time now. If not, then there was no point wasting her breath. She spun a finger over her shoulder to let Matt know it was time to run out the guns, but he was heading aft even before she moved a muscle.

The comms display winked up with an incoming signal—no IFF code. _Three guesses what they're here for, Nels... and you only get credit for the first one._ She powered the shields and accepted the transmission. A heavily scarred, broadly grinning face snapped up on her HUD and she had to fight down the same urge to vomit as every other time she'd ever had to look at it.

" _Grinder!_ " she shouted cheerfully, faking a devil's grin of her own. "Fancy meeting you out here!" The other captain's grin instantly went away. The man she was facing, whose real name was Hans Grozoly, _hated_ that nickname. 'Grinder'—because his face looked like somebody had stuck it in one. He hated that name enough to kill, and Penny knew of at least three times he _had._ It would be interesting to see whether his pride or the bounty on her head was more important to him.

"Penelope. You've gotten careless—the same route, three times in a row?"

He had her there. That was how pirates chose the easiest targets, the ones least likely to put up a fight: they were the ones that took no precautions, like alternating routes and running in convoys. It hadn't occurred to her to do the same, because... well. _Because I thought I was still the wolf and not the sheep._ He could've bounced her IFF months ago, waited to make sure she'd come back through the same way again... _stupid. He's right, I got careless._

"So what brings you out this far?" _Keep it casual. Don't let him see you sweat._

"I have a message from your father," he replied. That could be interpreted in a few different ways, most of them bad. _All_ of them, really. Penny's last contact with her father had been somewhat less than amicable, and Quentin Clairmont was not a forgiving man. Still...

"Great. Send it over. Always nice to get mail from home." She pasted on a winning smile and put her feet up on the console.

Grozoly shook his head; the grin came back. "It's not that kind of message, Penny. He wants you to come home. He's willing to show you mercy. If you come back willingly, he _might_ not take the rest of your fingers."

"That so? Gee, isn't that sweet. Think I'll pass. Do give him my regards." Penny cut the feed. She wouldn't say it aloud, but the offer was tempting. She knew the price would be much higher than Grozoly was letting on, but still... it was a way back. A way _out._ A safer choice than spending the rest of her life on the run, even if it cost her a whole hand.

Besides, it wasn't her _father's_ offer—not really, if it hadn't come directly from his mouth. It was Grozoly's offer, and _his_ word was worth less than yesterday's shat-out breakfast. She didn't doubt that her father would show _some_ degree of mercy, however he'd decided to define the word this week... but it was entirely up to her captor how long it'd take to deliver her to him, and in what condition. It didn't take a genius to figure out what would happen if she surrendered to Grozoly—he'd always been one of the twisted ones. The traders would be dead for certain. Matt... who knew? That depended on whether anyone on the pirate ship had a debt with him. He'd probably end up going out the same airlock as the others. Penny could tell from Grozoly's face that her own fate would be something far less merciful.

Penny had to hand it to the bastard, though—he was a terrible excuse for a human being, but he was one hell of a pilot. He obviously knew full well exactly how fast his prey could accelerate... and he'd positioned his own ship so that he'd intercept the _Fool's Chance_ before Penny could shed enough velocity to maneuver. Belatedly, the computer threw up a tentative ID on Grozoly's ship: a Drake Caterpillar. The _Wendigo,_ then; she was the only one of her type in the Syndicate as far as she knew. The beastly Caterpillar would never best Penny's _Chance_ in a turning fight, but she knew the _Wendigo_ well—it had once been her father's ship, a lifetime ago when he still worked for Dorian Hess. There were concealed weapon emplacements all over the converted transport—more than enough to blow a lone Cutlass out of space if it couldn't evade. There was no way she could punch through Grozoly's shields before he took her out.

She grimaced and spliced Matt into the commlink, with his feed up in the turret set to receive only. She also sent him a message, plain text: _Trust me. Be ready._ There was a faint _clang_ from somewhere aft—Matt's boot against the inner hull, signaling his acknowledgment in the usual way. She couldn't run, and she couldn't take Grozoly in a stand-up fight, so that left being a devious bitch. _Everybody's gotta have a talent._ She took a deep breath and signaled the _Wendigo_.

"Should I assume you've changed your mind?" The smug bastard was just sitting there eating a sandwich and sipping what she could only assume was some variation on his usual rotgut. She rolled her eyes and threw her head back, as if exasperated, but with a heavy sigh that suggested she was ready to give in to the inevitable.

"Perhaps we could... come to an arrangement?"

 _Translation,_ she thought: _I'll make it worth your while and you'll forget you saw me._ Which she knew was a lie going and coming: he couldn't just let her go. His pride and his reputation wouldn't allow it, nevermind what her father would do to him if he found out Grozoly had caught her, then _lost_ her. Penny smiled. He smiled. They smiled at each other, each fully aware of how utterly, completely insincere the other's smile was.

She was still pretty sure that he thought she would go along with the gag. He was just arrogant enough to think that he could outwit her, even when he knew she was playing him. She just needed to dangle a sweet enough payday in front of his face; if she offered too little, he'd take it as an insult. Just enough, though, and he'd take it as a compliment. An assessment of his worthiness as an adversary... and as a conqueror.

"I don't have much," she said, scratching the back of her head. That much was true; her cargo was a pair of briefcases with crypto-locks that would probably be worth a fortune but which would destroy their contents if forced open. Those weren't the only things she had of value, though; the thought popped into her head with a chortle that took Herculean effort to stifle. She put on what she figured was her best desperate pleading mask: "Around forty thousand creds' worth," she said into the pickup with a little embarrassed wince that she hoped looked genuine. True to form, she saw the greed light up his eyes. His brain was already adding her mystery cargo to the reward he'd reap for turning her over to her father.

"That will be adequate," he said, grinning widely. "I will instruct my crew to prepare the hold." _He really thinks I'm scared of him._

Penny cut her shields and guns and reduced power to the main engines to make it look like she was heaving to. The other ship drew closer, but was still coming at her from head on—his ship spun end-for-end and its powerful main drive flared. Grozoly was going for a zero-zero intercept rather than blowing past her and coming about for a slower, but more cautious approach. _And why shouldn't he?_ she thought. _It's not as though my weapons or targeting systems are powered. I'm just a helpless little girl. See? You've already won..._ He was above her now; he needed to pass below to reach her docking port, and in a few more seconds he'd track right across her bow... timing was everything. If she loosed the missiles too soon, he'd simply dodge them and with the targeting computer down they'd never reacquire. If she waited too long, he'd be too close and the missiles' warheads wouldn't arm before they impacted... or, worse, they'd strike the wrong part of the hull and just make the bastard angry.

Kilometers ticked down and became meters; the rate of closure slowed. Penny gripped the stick with both hands to hold it steady, lest a thruster fire and betray her deception. The _Wendigo_ grew until it blotted out the stars... and slowly, far too slowly for comfort, eased into Penny's crosshairs, still pointing her prodigious hindquarters towards the _Chance_ , oblivious to the danger. The larger ship's shields flickered and dropped to prepare for docking...

 _Now._

She squeezed the trigger and gave Grozoly his forty thousand credits—forty-one thousand, two hundred and eighty, to be exact. The price of two shipkiller missiles, plus tax. The big warheads tore into the unshielded powerplant of the pirate ship; it fell into a lazy starboard roll and sailed right past the _Chance's_ docking collar. Penny grinned and powered back up, starting with the shields. There wasn't much chance that Grozoly could return fire with damage like that, but it never hurt to be _absolutely_ sure. She took her time, carefully lining up shots for Matt so he could blow off all of the _Wendigo's_ armaments—only when the Caterpillar's last weapon had been reduced to slag did she pull alongside the derelict raider and open a channel to her captain.

"Sorry about that, Grinder—nothing personal." That was a lie; it was entirely personal. He'd made his intentions clear enough, and she wasn't going to feel bad about betraying a treacherous snake like him. It was what he deserved. To his credit—what little he'd earned—Grozoly didn't plead or threaten. He glared into the pickup with his one good eye, crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, and bled down the front of his suit in impotent silence.

"You have two minutes to abandon ship," she said flatly. "Or you could stay aboard. Doesn't make any difference to me." She terminated the commlink and swiped an arm across her brow, half wishing she'd done so before calling Grozoly to gloat... not that it mattered if he knew how nervous she'd been.

Grozoly made the smart choice; before the two minutes had passed, the _Wendigo's_ crew pod separated from the drifting hulk and fired its escape thrusters. When it had reached what she judged to be a safe distance from the main hull, Penny lit up her targeting systems and calmly blasted the pod apart.

There was a horrified gasp—she turned in her seat to see the freighter's captain standing over her shoulder. She hadn't even seen him enter the cockpit, and obviously Matt had been too preoccupied to notice. She slowly got out of her seat and faced the trembling spacer.

"You... you killed them? You..." his expression fluttered, then settled on righteous fury. "You _murdered_ them!"

Penny rolled her eyes, started to turn back around... then lost her patience with the old coot. She took him by the shoulders and pushed him back against the cockpit door with an audible _thunk_.

"They weren't going to kill you! They promised they weren't going to kill you!"

 _They weren't going to... you stupid, fucking bastard._ She wanted to put her fist through his wrinkled face. He'd known... from the second she'd answered his distress call, he'd known. _That_ was why he'd been so scared. He was the bait in Grozoly's trap.

"What'd he tell you, huh? He'd let you go if you went along with it?" The old man started to say something, but she cut him off with a gesture. "Doesn't matter. You're an idiot for believing him." Penny held her right hand up to his face—the old man's eyes gaped at the stumps of her little and ring fingers. Let the realization of what those stumps meant sink in for a _long_ moment before she let him go.

" _That's_ the kind of people you're crying about," she growled. "You're right—they _would_ have let me live. That's _exactly_ why I killed them." She slapped the hatch release and pushed past him into the hold, where Matt was waiting.

"How you wanna handle it, Nel?" His expression was all murder. The big guy took a straightforward view of right and wrong: if you brought harm on him or his, your life was forfeit. Not so long ago, that would have made him the best company in the 'Verse; he was loyal as a dog and twice as protective of anyone he deemed worthy of that loyalty. The way he saw it, the old spacer had a blood debt to settle.

Penny held a hand up to warn him off. "We're not gonna 'handle' it. They're not bad people, Matt, just... _stupid._ Break out the gear, let's see what Grinder left behind." They weren't in that world anymore. A little nagging doubt in the back of her head told her that she should even have agreed with the old man: she should have let Grozoly live, and reported his location to the Advocacy. _Maybe I'm not as much of a do-gooder as I like to think I am._ It was an... uncomfortable thought. She turned back to the freighter captain, who had gone over to cower with his family. He shied away when she approached; she held her hands up and took a step back.

"Look, gramps, we're not gonna hurt you. Just keep your hands to yourselves and we'll still get you where you need to be... but I need to check that ship first."

"To see if there's anything valuable?" There was the faintest hint of an accusation behind the terror. She sighed and shook her head. The old geezer was dense, that was for sure. How he could have had his ship crippled and his family threatened and still believe that he'd been dealing with the _good guys_ was... stupefying.

"That ship's captain, Grozoly... he was a _slaver,_ gramps. If he had anything— _anyone_ —in his hold, he'd have left them behind because he expected me to blow up the ship, not him. No ship, no slaves, no evidence." The dim light of a greater realization dawned on the old man's face. "So," she continued, "you can sit there and keep your hands to yourself... while I go search that wreck to see if anyone's _alive_ over there. _Get it yet?"_ She left it at that and went to get her suit on.

 _I know the bad guys because I was one,_ she thought. _All my life. Maybe not as bad as Grozoly... or, hell, Dad... but I hurt a lot of people. I haven't been in the 'Verse so long... and maybe, just maybe, there's a chance I can still make it right. Pay the balance down before I'm drowning in blood like all the others._


	4. Chapter 03

**Chapter 3**

 **The Present—November 3** **rd** **, 2944—Quasi, Terra.**

As far as cheap dives went, Backlight wasn't anything to sing about, but it filled a hole well enough in a pinch. Penny threw back her second vodka and slumped back on the couch next to a pair of spacers whose intentions had little to do with alcohol or privacy. _As long as they stay on their side,_ she thought, _we won't have a problem._ She made a face at the bartender and he grabbed another glass from behind the counter. No, it wasn't a classy establishment, but it was a good one at least. She hadn't found any hookups here who she'd have deemed more than just satisfactory, but the booze wasn't watered down as much as the last place she'd tried tonight... and wasn't that what really mattered in the end?

It was funny, when she gave it more than a passing thought. A few months ago she couldn't bear to be planetside, and now she couldn't stand being in space. Now here she was in some dive bar in the Lower Tenth when she should be up there... _out there_ , she reminded herself. It had been long enough that she was even starting to slip into grounder lingo. _What the hell is wrong with me?_ She was hardly the only human being who'd ever lost a friend. Not even the only one who'd had one die right next to her. Behind her. _Whatever. He's still dead, and I'm still here... so what comes next?_

For as far back as Penny could remember, Matt Wahl had been at her back. Their relationship was a hard one to define—most of the people they ran across thought they must be jumping each others' bones, but it had never been like that. He had always been her common sense, and she had always been his conscience—the washed up marauder and the pirate's daughter. Two rejects thriving against the whole damn 'Verse. And then she'd gone and gotten him killed.

 _That payday doesn't look so great now._ She'd always been on the lookout for a big score, and that convoy job had fit the bill. Not only was the pay great, being on the edge of Vanduul space, but one of the transport captains had cut her and Matt in on a share of some contraband he was carrying in exchange for their escort. There hadn't been any attacks by the lizards in _months_. Too bad the 'Verse didn't work quite that way. Now she had no money, no ship, and no friends. _Great job, Nels._ The only thing she had left was a job with her uncle's shipping firm, and who knew how much longer that would last.

The place was getting crowded, so Penny vacated her spot on the couch and elbowed her way over to the bar—if she had to put up with this many people, faster service seemed like a reasonable compromise. She motioned for another drink and soon had the comforting warmth of hard liquor swimming through her veins.

A big Tevarin sat on the stool beside hers. His fist thumped heavily on the counter; the bartender threw him a rude gesture and turned to another patron, but the Tevarin didn't seem bothered—he just slid a credit chit towards the taps and reached over the counter to pour his own drink. He poured a generous serving of whiskey into the tallest glass he could reach, downed half of it in a single gulp, and flashed Penny a satisfied grin in that spine-tingling way only a Tevarin could possibly manage. She snorted a laugh in spite of herself. The big alien's grin widened.

"I have been looking for you," he said nonchalantly. Penny's left hand inched towards her holdout gun—those were words that never brought her anything but trouble. She kept her expression friendly and laid her three-fingered right hand on the big alien's shoulder.

"Well, you found me," she said matter-of-factly, then made her pistol appear under his chin while he was distracted by her other hand. His pupils dilated, but he maintained his jester's smile and began to softly chuckle.

"Perhaps it is you I should have poured a drink for," he quipped, at the same time laying both hands on the bar, palms up and empty. Penny's weapon quickly disappeared back under the bar before anyone else could notice it—still aimed more or less in the direction of the stranger's head.

"Already got one," Penny growled. "Start talking."

"Did I not already do that?"

"What does he want this time? Other than my head on a stick." This was not the time for one of her father's goons to drop in. Apart from not really wanting to turn a perfectly serviceable watering hole into a shooting gallery, she was really just not in the bloody mood for a fight.

"I do not know who would want your head on a stick," grunted the Tevarin. "It would not be very useful that way."

 _Is this guy for real?_ She shook her head and finished off her vodka, but still had a sinking feeling it was going to take more than that to deal with whatever headache had just landed next to her. Why did they always try to talk to her first? It would be so much easier if they just led with the shooting and the cursing and the dying instead of trying to make small talk!

"Cut the shit already, will you? I'm _so_ gorram not having this right now."

"I am not here for your head on a stick, and I do not know who would be. We have something in common." _Yeah, buddy. That's right. His name is Quentin and maybe he wants it on a platter instead._

"And that would be?" _Here it comes. Any second. If it's not Dad, it'll be Vargas, or Sinclair, or Hatch, or someone from the Kall... no, gotta be the Kall. They love turning this shit into happy fun time._ She wished for once that she'd run into a bounty hunter or a hitman or bunch of thugs who'd get to the bloody point instead of trying to make it some kind of fucked-up game.

"Elysium," the Tevarin said—soberly, half-whispered. The bottom fell out of Penny's stomach. _I... didn't see that coming. Why? Who is this guy?_ She waved at the bartender, who looked her way, grimaced when he saw who she was sitting next to, and reluctantly came over to refill her drink. She downed it and caught his arm before he walked away, indicating both her glass and the Tevarin's. He topped them both off, but she could have sworn that she saw his teeth grinding as he did so.

The Tevarin clicked a finger on the bar and then down over its edge. Penny cocked her head at him, then looked down, saw what he meant, and quickly pocketed her gun. She hadn't even realized it was still in her hand. _At least the vodka's working._ Okay, so the big guy _wasn't_ working for her father. That bought him a few minutes.

"Shitty day," she said to no one in particular.

"Yes, it was," said the Tevarin. "I have heard people tell me that I am lucky. I am not sure that I believe them."

"Matt wasn't lucky," she muttered, taking another gulp of poison. She wished the oaf sitting next to her would get to the void-cursed _point_ already and leave her be... if he was looking to give his misery some company, it sure as hell wasn't doing _Penny's_ any favors.

"I lost shipmates as well," he said, and held up a hooked finger when she opened her mouth to snap at him. "I was the first mate. There were two other survivors from my ship: our engineer, and our loadmaster. Now there is only the loadmaster."

"Look, I don't really..."

"The engineer, you see, was the husband of our Captain. Two weeks ago, he put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger."

 _Sucks... why tell me? Don't_ need _more dead people, don't_ want _more dead people._

"I only had _one_ friend..." she heard herself say. The words were a little slow, but definitely hers. Why? "One friend...worth a shit. Got him killed." Why was she even talking to this guy? So they both lost friends in Elysium. She didn't know him, or any of his dead people, and didn't much care to. Why would he care about hers?

"You are wrong about that," said the Tevarin. "You did not kill your friend."

"Who did then?" She leaned over and started jabbing his chest. "Who? Tell me. Who?"

"The Vanduul killed him. As well as all of the others." He paused to finish his drink and fished for something in his pocket. "So _do_ something about it."

His hand came up and fell heavily on the bar with the strange sound of metal on plastene. When it fell away, there was a small disc where it had struck. He gave her one last grin and departed without another word.

Penny grabbed the disc and turned it over in her good hand. It was a challenge coin like the ones Uncle David had shown her, the ones he'd collected while he was an officer in the Navy. On one side, there was the image of a city—"Armitage" read the single word above its skyline, with the date "2943" below. Around the rim was inscribed a message: "The meek may inherit the Earth—the rest of us are going to Orion." She took another drink and turned it over. A four-pronged weapon decorated the face of the coin, aimed at a trio of stars. There was another message on the rim: "Never Forgive—Never Forget." Below that: "Operation Pitchfork."

She beckoned for another refill.

* * *

A gust of wind blew Penny's hood from her head as she made her way through the streets. She shut her eyes tight and tugged it back up again before her subconscious could figure out that she was tricking it—a spacer born and raised, she still couldn't quite get used to the idea of open sky above. David had shown her this trick, something one of his Navy friends had shown him in turn: a little brain-hack to fool herself into feeling like she was wearing a helmet. It was silly, but it worked; wearing a hood, she could just about ignore the fact that she was _outside_ without a vac-suit on. After a few deep, calming breaths, she was on her way again. There wasn't much going on at this hour. Most of the stores were closed, but that wasn't a big deal—she wasn't out to go shopping.

The seedier side of Quasi's business district appealed to her—it was still an order of magnitude more refined than her old haunts on Ninevah, but the locals were mostly spacers with temp housing who were between jobs or, like her, between ships. The bounty money from the handful of Vanduul she and Matt had killed left her with enough UEC to swing a small flat in Quasi with a bed and a toilet, which was really all she needed. Still, she had quickly discovered that spending her nights in bed looking up at the sterile white plastene overhead was a recipe for disaster, so she'd taken to wandering in the evenings to still her mind. Most of the time, her wanderings led her to bars, but that was neither here nor there.

Tonight, though... _why the hell did I keep it?_ The coin was still in her pocket. Her curiosity was growing as the comfortable vodka haze faded away, but the part of her better judgment that she hadn't drowned was screaming at her to toss it in the nearest recycler and be done with it. She was trying to get over this shit, not find more reasons to hang on! Except... _That isn't really working, is it Nels? Running errands for Uncle David isn't getting you anywhere at all._

So the Tevarin thought she should go looking for revenge. It made a fair amount of sense. _It's still a blood debt, even if the bastards who wronged us don't know the rules._ Her hand went to the tattoo on her left shoulder—blood ink. The proof of what she'd done to Dorian Hess for trying to have her killed, a lifetime ago. _I had a lot less to work with then—and if it weren't for Matt, I'd be decorating Hess' shoulder instead of the other way around. Don't I owe him this?_ But that law, the only law that people like her father—and, yes, like her, once upon a time—recognized... that was everything she'd tried to leave behind. _Blood answers blood. Harm mine and I'll kill yours._

Was that the best answer she could come up with? She knew too well what she'd be if she let thoughts of vengeance rule her. It was too easy to believe that was justice... that getting even was the same thing as making things right. Besides, the Vanduul who'd killed Matt were already dead—the Navy took care of that. Did really she think that she could do more against those scaly bastards than the entire might of the Empire? Even if the _Chance_ were spaceworthy again, she'd seen clearly enough just how well the old girl fared against a minor raiding party.

Did the dead really even care if the living avenged them? _Maybe not, but it mattered when they were alive, didn't it?_ Matt would have been the first to tell her that she needed to settle the score. He _damn_ sure would have rolled some heads if he'd been the one left alive, and he wouldn't have given the matter a single second thought. Blood debts had always been an article of faith to him. For a friend to be murdered and to not do anything? But then, what could she do that hadn't already been done? _Hell, I'm thinking myself in circles._

Penny fumbled her code twice before she got the door to her flat open, stumbled inside, and collapsed on the bed. Time disappeared—blissfully, at first, but then the sleepless moments stretched long until they felt like hours. It was pointless; her mind wouldn't stop until she wore it out one way or another, and she wasn't halfway drunk enough. Instead she grabbed her MobiGlas and flicked the lights on. _It can't hurt to look,_ she thought. It was something to do until she was exhausted enough to sleep. The coin was still in her pocket—she laid it on the bed next to her MobiGlas and scanned it in. Results exploded across the screen:

" _The Vanduul Threat Is Greater Than We Realize_ "— _A former public official from Garron claims that the UEE has been covering up the extent of the danger for years._

" _We Are Pitchfork_ "— _An unidentified writer claiming responsibility for last year's "Pitchfork Manifesto" reaches out to the Empire once again with a passionate plea for public support._

" _Are Video Games Training Our Children?"—A concerned parent claims that members of Operation Pitchfork are using popular simulation game Arena Commander to prepare their pilots for combat against the Vanduul._

" _One Year After Pitchfork, UEE Strangely Silent"—Despite boasting more firepower than a UEEN battlegroup, Operation Pitchfork has yet to provoke an official reaction from the Imperator. Our readers want to know why; investigation within._

" _The Vanduul Are A Distraction"—A mother of four from Terra believes that the Xi'An are the real threat, and that the Empire's focus on the Vanduul is the result of a conspiracy to fracture humanity._

" _Top Ten Reasons Why The UEE Must Stop Pitchfork"—A private organization capable of starting an interstellar war presents a credible threat to Imperial stability. Learn more inside!_

" _Are the Vanduul Misunderstood?"—Who really started the centuries-long conflict? History Professor Jonah Neusmeyer presents a radical new interpretation of the Vanduul's troubled relationship with the UEE._

" _The Cattle of Armitage"—Our investigative reporters set out to learn exactly what life has been like for the humans who have lived beneath the hostile skies of Orion for centuries._

There were images as well; hundreds upon hundreds of colorful propaganda pieces depicting everything from cutesy little cartoons of farmers with literal pitchforks chasing hideous alien monsters, to stylized propaganda posters, to disturbingly graphic captures of the aftermath of Vanduul raids. It was all... _too easy. All I had to do was look, and all of this was right there. Why isn't it all over the news?_

And it hadn't been. Penny vaguely remembered something about a "Pitchfork Manifesto" about this time last year, but she'd never read it and after the usual few days of flash and discourse it had slipped quietly off the public scene. Yet here she was reading about _fleets_. Something was off about all of it. _It has to be a hoax. Some kind of stupid conspiracy theory, like the Imperator being Ivar Messer's clone or some such shit._ There was no way the UEE wouldn't be all over something like this.

It was something to keep busy with, anyway. Something to look forward to doing tomorrow and beyond, which was more than she'd been able to claim for months. _I'll ask around next time I make a run for the company._ If this "Operation Pitchfork" was for real, then spacers pretty much anywhere ought to have strong feelings about it one way or another. Or, if all that shit about "fleets" was true, some of them would almost have to be involved. Fleets needed ships; ships needed crews; crews needed supplies. If there was a physical organization to go with all the talk, it shouldn't be hard to find.

 _And what happens if I find it?_

* * *

 _ **The Past** ** **—** Six months ago—three weeks before Elysium. Hurston, Stanton.**_

Penny had to nearly run to keep up with Matt's loping gait; he wasn't making it easy for her, but she wasn't done with this conversation. Not yet. Didn't he see that this was the best chance they'd ever had? It was as though the whole sick machinery of the 'verse had finally creaked its way around and given them both the break they'd been waiting for all their lives. That kind of chance never came around twice... it didn't fucking matter if it was a risk! What was the worst that could possibly happen?

"I don't trust 'im," Matt growled, as though he'd been reading her mind. "You ever seen a load worth that much wasn't bad news for somebody? That's not getting out, Nel, that's _throwing all in._ "

 _So what if it is?_ she thought. _We get double-crossed, how's that any different from where we are now—always looking over both shoulders for someone trying to kill us or take us for everything we have?_ Put that against even the slightest chance that Captain Hornby's offer was on the level... there was no contest. Not to Penny.

"We need this, Matt. _I_ need this. It's a new start. A chance for success on our own terms!" At that, Matt stopped cold, whirled around, and jabbed a grimy finger into her forehead.

"Know what _success_ looks like, Nel?" She glared back; he turned the finger around and buried it in the meat of his chest. " _Me._ Fat, old, and grinning. This ain't how to get there." He whirled back around and kept walking.

"Three... million... credits... each!" she said, incredulous. "Three. _Million._ You could buy yourself the biggest gorram smile you've ever worn, Matt! We both could. We could get out—for _real_ this time. Get away. From _everything!_ "

"I had money once... plenty of it, enough to set myself up pretty, and all it _ever_ got me was more assholes trying to take it away."

"So we buy a new ship. New _names._ We could go live with the Xi'an, or the Banu... somewhere Dad would never even think to look for us!"

How was this not getting through? There was nothing they couldn't do with a fortune like that! She was so tired of constantly putting everything she had into just getting by. Following all the rules and never getting ahead, always getting stopped and searched because of her name and her look. She didn't have to become her father to do this job. True, she didn't know what the cargo was... but she knew it _wasn't_ slaves; Captain Hornby flew a Constellation, the _Grayson_ , and it couldn't have held even hers and Matt's shares worth, let alone the full twenty million Hornby had alluded to. So it was fine. Nobody had to get hurt, and she'd fly away set up for life.

"It doesn't work that way," came Matt's exasperated reply. "Do you really think you'll ever be free of that man? Nel, he won't stop chasing you until he's dead or you are. The only thing you could do with all that money is _buy back into the game._ "

 _This is pointless. He's got his thick fucking skull set, and not a damned thing I say is gonna crack it._ She only had one card left to play—one she'd hoped to never, ever have to use. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stopped following him.

"Fine then," she said to the back of his receding head. "Look, I get it—you're done, you're out. You don't owe me." Matt stopped walking and turned around very, _very_ slowly.

"Nel, don't—"

"No," she pressed. " _Slick_. Always knew sooner or later we'd be on different headings, why _not_ now?"

"That's not—"

"I hope you find it, Matt. Success. I hope I see you again some day, fat and old. _I'll_ be the one grinning."

She nearly tripped over her final words. She'd gone too far by half, and she knew it, but it was way too late to take it back. Matt's face was cold stone, his mind changed—but not the way she wanted it.

"I... yeah." There was a long, horrible silence—and then, at last, he shrugged and turned away. "S'long, kid." He took three steps, paused. "Bright stars and clear skies, Nel," he said over his shoulder—then he was gone.


	5. Chapter 04

**Chapter 4**

 **The Present—November 4** **th** **, 2944—Ostler Transstellar Shipping, GmbH—Quasi, Terra.**

Penny surprised everyone, David not least, by arriving early for work that morning. After months on end of working insystem courier duty exclusively, her name appeared at the top of the interstellar roster. When asked what had precipitated the change, she was evasive, so David chose to leave well enough alone on the assumption that whatever it was, it had to be good news. She even ventured into the freight warehouse, where the wreck of her ship had been stored ever since David had it transported back from Centauri months ago.

To his mind, the sudden turnaround was another good omen on top of what was shaping up to be the best operational quarter in years. Business was finally picking up for OTS, and while the company was still only a shadow of what it had once been, there were once again rows of desks filled with the warming buzz of activity. They'd brought on two dozen new people in the last six months, and before long they'd be needing more ships as well.

 _And to think three years ago we were hanging by a thread._ It had been a hard road, from the news of Father's death, to the public embarrassment of the board's corruption, the lost cargo on account of mismanagement and theft... for a time, David had been unsure that the firm which bore his family's name could be—or should be—saved. _In a way,_ he thought, _I suppose I didn't start believing again until the day she put that beat-up Cutlass down on our pad._ The reappearance of a family member long thought lost was, to his mind, an omen. The fact that she'd brought a ship of her own and a solid work ethic to add to their tiny revenue stream might have also had something to do with it.

Not that he would ever have told his niece that—she put up a tough front, but didn't much care for being put on the spot. He tried to show his appreciation where he could... and where his brother and sister weren't looking. Frank had warmed to Penny somewhat over the two years and change she'd been with the company, but only insofar as he felt obligated by blood to be polite to her. Tess still resented Penny's mother, and therefore Penny as well; she'd always struggled with the belief that their parents had only conceived her as a replacement for the daughter who'd left. Sometimes it helped to see the bigger picture... but that was the benefit of being the favorite son. The only chip David had ever worn on his shoulder was never having made Commander.

Still, it was high time to give 'the kids'— and he couldn't help thinking of them as such; although Tess was his sister and Penny his niece, they were close in age, and both decades younger than him or Frank—a bit of incentive to get along. He smiled as he put the finishing touches on the new contract; it was underhanded in a way that only a man with 'Executive' in his title could have appreciated.

 _The things I do for family,_ he thought. _I'll get an earful from Tess for sure._

* * *

Two jaws dropped in the mid-afternoon when the new flight roster went up. One immediately clicked shut and its owner marched herself up three flights of stairs to berate her older brother. The other was quickly filled with strong drink from a hip flask and, thus anesthetized, quietly closed.

Penny sighed, stuffed her hands in her pockets, and headed for the lift—she didn't want to be in the middle of the brewing storm; she'd seen and caused her share of family quarrels, two of them ending in her losing a finger, and the last resulting in a sizable price on her head. She didn't expect this one to turn violent, but her aunt's volcanic temper was legendary at the office and it wasn't likely that Penny laughing in her face would improve the situation.

She left the building at a brisk pace which slowed somewhat as she crossed the grounds and approached the warehouse for the second time that day. _I don't know why I need to be here,_ she thought. Ever since Elysium, she couldn't even look at the _Chance_ , but against all reason, spending some time with the ruin of her life had actually stilled her thoughts today. It was as though Matt's ghost had finally taken leave of the old Cutlass and moved on to brighter places; when Penny climbed inside and sat in the cockpit, it no longer felt like defiling a tomb.

 _Maybe it's time,_ she thought. She'd been putting off her decision for months now, letting the shipwreck sit quietly in the back of the storage facility while she self-medicated to avoid having to think about dealing with what it represented. But the _Fool's Chance_ didn't feel like a weight on her back anymore. She was just a ship again. _A ship,_ she realized. _Not a home._ Nowhere had felt quite like a home since Matt's death—despite her reluctance to spend much time in space since then, her groundside apartment was never going to fit the bill; she was still a spacer at heart, and always would be. Then she'd seen her name below Tess' on the roster for the _Vanilla May._

She'd spent time aboard the big Constellation before. She was the ship David had flown to Saisei to pick her up after Elysium, and Penny had flown in her on the occasional in-system hop since then... but never as her pilot. The last time she'd flown something so large was... _not a good day,_ she recalled with a shudder. The one and only time she'd flown her father's old Caterpillar, the _Wendigo_ —since reduced to a battered wreck by her own hand. Then again, it wasn't her _piloting_ that had ruined that flight, and the ship had been just fine until she blew it to pieces in the _Chance_ a few years later. She'd flown dozens of smaller craft, of course—everything from other Cutlasses to Freelancers, Auroras, snubfighters... doubtless the wide variety of craft she'd demonstrated competence with was her chief qualification. Not that Tess was likely to see it that way; Penny's aunt wasn't her biggest fan to begin with, and she'd actually flown the _Vanilla May_ a few times, but Uncle David had cut her objections off at the knees before she made them: Tess was named as the _May's_ acting Captain. Doubtless this was another one of his attempts to force a reconciliation, but after two and a half years Penny was well used to the drama.

 _I'm ready now._ She played her hands over the _Chance's_ controls, and although the systems attached to them were dead, when she closed her eyes she could see the stars whirl around her. She'd been on the ground for too long... and her brief, strange meeting in the bar last night only lent weight to the revelation. Something, somewhere was reminding her not-so-gently that she wasn't where she belonged—whether it was with the strange Tevarin on some insane crusade, or flying one of her Uncle's ships, it sure as hell wasn't at a bar stool drowning in things she couldn't change. Penny took one last look around the charred cockpit and gingerly extracted herself from the seat.

The _Chance's_ hold had been cleaned of debris, emptied of the furniture she and Matt had accumulated during the handful of years they'd called her home. She could nearly picture it full of cargo now—though she wasn't sure the life of a trader was truly the future she wanted, it had the virtue of honesty and simplicity about it. Of course, it would take a great deal of work to get the old girl up and running again... but that, she decided, was what she'd do. It was time to stop running away.

Satisfied with her choice, Penny hopped down from the tail and circled her ship, taking stock of the damage, for the first time with a clear head. She needed new engines, shields, landing gear, and likely all new plating, but the bones were still good—no frame warping, no broken structural members. A few minutes was all she needed for a superficial inspection; the rest could wait until she came back from whatever trip David wanted to send her on. She took one last look at the _Chance's_ nose, at the oddly undisturbed smiley face winking back at her... there was something stuck on its tongue, which itself was odd because Penny had never painted a tongue on the face. She leaned in close and plucked it off: a small, square card with writing on one side and a symbol stamped on the other.

The same symbol, she realized, as the one on the coin the Tevarin had given her. The head of a pitchfork framing the three stars of Orion's belt, as seen from Old Earth. She turned it back over. _"Sennek Tul Na,"_ it read: _"Stanton. Arc Corp. Tollhouse. Sooner rather than later."_

* * *

 _ **The Past** ** **—** Two years ago—August 2942.**_

David tossed back another round of Scotch and rubbed his eyes. This argument was going in circles... _no, scratch that. My_ life _is going in circles. How many times have we had this exact same argument now?_ He poured another slug into his tumbler and flopped back onto the office couch, opposite where his old friend and longtime business partner Ben Lancaster sat, brooding.

"Ben," he said, with an overwhelming sensation of deja vu, "she's _family_."

"Yeah? Vicky was family too, wasn't she? Ran off with a pirate as I recall—and _he's_ the one that raised her, David."

"It's crossed my mind," David said, leaning tiredly on the couch arm. Quentin Clairmont wasn't the biggest name on the Advocacy's wanted list, but he was known widely enough even two and a half decades ago that when he stole away with Victoria Ostler's heart the scandal had shaken the family, and by extension the company, to its core. Penny carried _his_ name—a criminal's name—and Ostler Transstellar was in no condition to weather any more bad publicity after having been gutted by the Board's corruption. If she screwed up—if _anyone_ screwed up, even once—it could space any chance of reviving OTS. Still...

"Look, if it means that much to you, I have a friend out in Garron might be able to check her out, but... you know I won't work with her if..." Ben's voice trailed off; his hand went to his pocket, where David knew he still kept his old Advocacy ID and service tag. "If she's her father's daughter," he finished. "Not even for you."

"I wouldn't ask you to." Ben was David's oldest and truest friend. He was also a lawman to the core—thirteen years on the job running down pirates like Penny's father. He'd seen far too much of what their kind was capable of to offer anyone from that world anything resembling the benefit of the doubt.

If Ben's office door were the one with "CEO" printed on it, he'd never have even given her a chance—that he was willing to bend that far was a testament to his faith in David's judgment, not to his estimation of her character. David, on the other hand, had served with men and women lower born who'd earned his respect with their lives. From them he knew how hard it must have been for Penny—and her friend—to escape that world, and for that he felt he owed them at least one good chance at something better.

"Get in touch with your friend," David said at last. "In the meantime just try to stay away from both of them. I know trust is too much to ask, but... just do this much for me."

What he didn't say, what he couldn't say, was that if the young woman he'd hired on had carried any _other_ blood in her veins, he'd have given her no more of a chance than Ben. Penny Clairmont, whoever she might prove to be, was all he had of his sister... when he'd told Tess, years ago, that both mother and child were dead, he'd only told half a lie: though there had been no evidence, no funeral, no bodies, Victoria and Penelope had been dead to their family for the better part of two decades. To recover even a tiny sliver would have been worth the risk, both personal and professional. He admitted to himself that he would rather have seen Vicky climb out of that ship, tell him sadly that her child had perished; hated himself for the fact, but there it was. _She's better than nothing at all. Hell of a thing to think about family._

The two men sat in silence for a time, staring out at the Quasi skyline glimmering against the night-time starscape. There was no easy way through, for the family or the company that bore its name. All David could do, all he wanted for the family legacy, was to do right by his own... but how could he do that when he didn't know what the right thing even was? Ever since that fateful day when he'd been forced to put his papers in and take an early retirement to save OTS from the Board's mismanagement... It often seemed as though he was blindly guiding the whole mess from one crisis to another, escaping total disaster only by the narrowest margin of pure dumb luck.

 _But if that's all we're doing here... if that's all we are, why not take the chance?_

* * *

Ben's contact, an affable man named Singh who was winding down towards retirement working in a data hive in the Garron system, proved easy enough to get in touch with, and more than willing to make the trip. David declined to ask what kind of favor was worth going that far out of the way to settle. The three of them were huddled in a vacant, but more importantly, _windowless_ office at OTS, staring at a display in uncomfortable silence. Tracking across the screen was a string of still images taken of Penny since her arrival; this set focused in on a particularly elaborate and colorful tattoo on the young woman's left shoulder.

"I know it's blood ink," said David finally, "but I need to know why she's got it. If it's some kind of gang prestige thing..."

Singh froze the image, studied it carefully for a minute, then shook his head. "The wounded heart in the middle is almost certainly your girl," he said, enlarging and focusing down on each feature in turn as he analyzed it. "All of the bodies have weapons pointed at the heart; that likely means she killed them in self defense. Except... the decapitated one must have special significance." He contemplated the image some more, stroked his beard, and at last _hrmphed_ and gave a little nod that almost seemed reverent. "I think we're looking at _vengeance_ ink here."

"You sound impressed."

"I am. Ink like that is hard to get. You have to be wronged by someone—and it looks like it was pretty brutal—and then you have to get even... and there have to be witnesses when you do it. Nobody gets ink like this without someone with a solid rep speaking for them. Not if they want to keep it, anyway."

"Keep it?"

"Blood ink is damn near sacred to these types," Ben interjected. "You get blood ink you don't deserve, someone cuts it right off you—if you're lucky."

Singh nodded. He, like Ben, had spent many years fighting piracy; unlike Ben, he'd spent those years behind a desk, gathering information, learning everything he could about outlaw culture so he could use that knowledge to take them down. "Whoever gave her that ink signed their work," he stated with total certainty, "or she wouldn't show it off like that. If you'll bounce me a copy of these, I can probably find out who and where."

"Tattoos for her sort are dossiers, rap sheets, and resumes all rolled into one," said Ben, once again prompting a nod of agreement from Singh. "The ink tells anyone who sees it what she's done, where she's been, whose crew she runs with. It's their version of a background check. Maybe even a little more secure. Every drop of ink could cost you more than a fine and some jail time if you can't back it up. Records can be hacked, and all you need then is to change a few numbers here, a few words there. Ink doesn't work like that—not to their minds, anyway. It's one of the reasons we have so much trouble getting people close to the major players—most of them won't trust anyone who doesn't have certain tattoos from someone with a solid rep. You've got to turn an inker for that, and it's not so easy when they have to guarantee their work with their life."

"And you're sure that it was self-defense? Not... something else?" David very carefully avoided saying _murder_. Well, _revenge_ was the same as murder under UEE law, but without knowing what lay behind it, he was willing to let her explain herself before he made any judgments on that point. Things worked differently in outlaw space; to not retaliate for whatever had been done to her might have been taken as an invitation to do worse.

"If she'd killed them defending someone else," Singh explained, "there'd be a representation of that person too, but there isn't. The heart—again, that's her—doesn't have a weapon of its own, so it probably wasn't a hit or any kind of gang war incident."

David thought about it for a long moment, and gestured for Singh to let the slideshow continue. Who was it that Penny had told him about?—her father had been his lieutenant. There'd been something deep and ugly about the way she said his name. _Hess._ That was the name.

"Dorian Hess," he said. "The headless guy must be Dorian Hess." Singh whistled and David felt in his gut that he must have hit on something important.

"Stars... that's just possible. I remember that one—we had eyes on him, say, ten years ago or thereabout. We were set to bag him the next time he stuck his neck out, then one day some punk kid walks up to him in his own hangar and burns a hole through his skull with a laser—killed in front of his whole crew by a teenaged girl. It fits—I mean, Hess was big time out there. Quentin Clairmont was one of his top lieutenants; he took over Hess' operation not long after."

A chill crept down David's spine. That sounded pretty cold-blooded. _How much sympathy should I have for a crime lord?_ It put Penny's directness into an unsettling light, though. What might she do if she felt like she'd been wronged by someone? A quick glance at Ben told him that his old friend's thoughts were three steps beyond that—the ex-lawman's eyes were hard and narrow.

"I know I'm talking you in circles here... but are you _sure_ she was justified?" _By her standards, anyway,_ he pointedly didn't add. There was no need to.

Singh shrugged as the image stream terminated. "I can't be _absolutely_ sure, but these tattoos are consistent with what I know... my advice is, ask her about it. If it is what I think it is, then she might tell you how she got it."

"That simple?"

"If it is something she is not ashamed of, then she won't hide it, and you can at least trust that what she says is true. If she won't tell you, then she may have something to hide. I would not want to be in your position either way."

That wasn't quite the reassurance David had been looking for, but he knew it was all he was likely to get. He sighed, ran off a copy of the surveillance files for Singh to look over, and sat back in his chair. _Why can't anything ever just be simple?_

* * *

Singh's advice, however, proved to be solid. David cornered his niece later that evening while she was working on her ship's landing gear and asked her, point blank, what the tattoo on her shoulder meant. She obviously didn't want to talk about it, but he'd brought a bottle and two chairs with him and obviously wasn't going away without an answer, so she sat down beside him, uncorked the whiskey, and took a deep swig.

The look in Penny's eyes was from far away in both space and time; there was pain there, somewhere, and not just a little. She didn't say anything until almost a quarter of the bottle was gone, and even then, her voice was uncharacteristically low.

"This was back when I still had all my fingers," she began, then told him about how she'd been ambushed and beaten within an inch of her life. How she'd fought as hard as she could; how it felt to stare into the hollow eyes of death. How the man who'd later become her copilot had saved her life. How her father, for all his ruthless reputation, was too afraid to act, and how she'd taken it upon herself to pay Hess back in kind for what he'd done to her...

* * *

 _Everything was quiet save for the ever-present humming of the station's environmental plant. She felt hyper-aware as she crossed Bulkhead 3-F-34; she was deep in the heart of it now, beyond any hope of rescue or escape. It was worth the danger. It was worth dying for. After all, hadn't she died once already—or the next thing to it? What did she have to lose?_

 _Matt would understand. Dad, she wasn't so sure about, but he'd given up his right to take this stand. He'd given it up when he failed to repay the blood debt, drop for drop, life for life. Her new friend should not have had to speak for her, to fight for her, but her own family—her own blood—had failed to. She couldn't let Matt risk any more for her... and her pride wouldn't let anyone take this away from her. She would not be a prize to be fought over and protected; she would not be a means to an end—and now was the time to give the lie to anyone who said different._

 _There were lookouts, but they were ignoring her, or at least she was pretty sure of it. One scrawny kid wasn't much to worry about; Dorian Hess used station rats for all kinds of odd jobs, so they came and went more or less as they pleased. It felt as though every pair of eyes was watching her, but she knew that wasn't true. None of them knew her, and even if they did they couldn't possibly recognize her now. Hess' thugs had seen to that—she'd barely even recognized herself when she woke up in the medical bay._

 _So much the better. All they'd done was make it possible for her to get close. Just a few dozen meters would be close enough. She resisted the urge to touch her little holdout gun lest someone realize that she was armed with more than the average station rat's shiv. The poetic symmetry of it was perfect: she'd take her revenge with the same gun that had failed to save her life._

 _Taz' info was good, as it always was. Hess was in the main hangar, inspecting his latest shipment—the only time he'd ever have his back to a door. It was now or never—she slipped out of her shoes so no one would hear her steps and padded carefully, quietly through the staging bay and out onto the hangar floor. Closer. Closer._

 _She was easily near enough to make the shot, but something made her feet keep walking. Closer and closer still—and then she was right behind him, almost close enough to reach out and tap him on the shoulder. She reached slowly into her pocket and drew her gun; only as it rose level with her enemy's head was she finally noticed._

 _Someone gasped and pointed; the bay fell silent in an instant. Everyone was looking towards... her._

 _Hess turned around, slowly; his eyes widened, but so slightly that only a few ever remembered the fact. There she stood, laser pistol held rock-steady in her hand, a bruised and bandaged girl only just fourteen. He looked her up and down, then let out his breath, puffing a tremendous cloud of acrid smoke into her face. She did not flinch, and neither did the aperture pointed at her enemy's face._

" _You," he said, his tone a strange mixture of irritation and bemusement. He'd surely expected retaliation, but not from this source. Her father, certainly, or men sent by her father... this was something entirely different. He'd miscalculated—badly. She wouldn't let him live to correct the mistake._

" _Me," she replied coldly._

" _You're not so easy to kill," he said with a little shrug, and sighed. That was the truth—and how! She remembered all too well just how hard she'd made them work for her blood. No delicate flower, this Clairmont girl. And yet she'd come so very, very close to an end. There was another debt she'd have to repay somehow—but that was for another day._

" _You are," she said with a little shrug, and pulled the trigger. Dorian Hess doubled over and fell to the deck with a smoking half-centimeter hole between his eyes; the stub of his cigar dropped beside him, punctuating his life with a tiny blot of ash. She lowered her weapon slowly. The crowd stared at her. They stared at Hess. They stared at her again._ _"The debt is paid," she stated, her voice just barely trembling, and then she turned around and walked slowly out of the bay—pistol still in hand._


	6. Chapter 05

**Chapter 5**

 **The Present—November 12** **th** **, 2944—Stanton System.**

The outbound run had been exactly as pleasant as Penny suspected it would be. Hardly two hours into the trip, she and Tess had come to an unspoken agreement to stay on opposite ends of the ship except when both of them were needed up front, and the uneasy truce had held—for the most part.

Their delivery orders specified a private landing pad on Hurston, and Penny wondered privately if the location of her mysterious meeting was a coincidence, or if somebody inside the company was feeding information to whoever wanted to meet with her. That was... an uncomfortable possibility. Ostler Transstellar was doing far better than it had been when she hired on, but the list of people privy to all ship crew assignments and destinations was still very short indeed.

After the delivery, and once Tess had secured a reasonably profitable cargo for the return trip, Penny broached the subject of a detour to ArcCorp. The reaction was more or less what she expected—a screaming match that nearly degenerated into fisticuffs. In the end, Tess proposed a compromise that Penny was certain served a dual purpose of getting her out of Tess' hair for a few hours: as the _Vanilla May_ passed ArcCorp on her way out to the jump point, she'd make orbit and delay for a few hours while Penny borrowed the Merlin and made a jaunt groundside.

It suited her just fine; this way at least she didn't have Tess breathing down her neck, although she fully expected to face another round of baseless accusations when she came back aboard. Suspicious this, sneaking off that... she'd long since stopped trying to convince Tess that she wasn't out to undermine what was left of the company's reputation with drugs, murder, and petty thievery.

Separation felt akin to liberation—the moment the little snubfighter dropped free of the _May_ , Penny felt a surge of excitement the like of which she hadn't known in a year or more. It felt so good that she couldn't resist putting the Merlin through a few tricks for old time's sake—to Tess' great irritation, as she made perfectly clear over the comms. Penny ignored her irritable aunt and made atmo at the steepest angle she _legally_ could, relishing every shudder of the tiny fighter as it fought against the very air.

Landing, however, was appreciably less pleasant. Penny approached the public facility nearest to "Tollhouse," which—of course—had turned out to be a bar when she looked it up... and promptly found herself in handcuffs being carried off the pad by a pair of Corporate Security muscleheads. Nothing she said seemed to penetrate their helmeted skulls, so she took it in stride. Chances were that they had standing orders to collar anyone who wasn't wearing a three-piece suit... or it was also very possible that she'd pinged somebody's facial recognition database. The fact that she had no _official_ criminal record had never stopped the Advocacy from getting on her case, and Corpsec goons had even _fewer_ rules to abide by. She wound up in a holding cell—one of the nicer ones she'd seen the inside of, all things considered—cooling her heels until someone felt like dealing with her. _Tess is gonna fizz when she gets wind of this._ But it couldn't be helped; if she busted out of here, she'd probably never get any answers.

It was well into local evening by the time Penny was transferred from the cell to an 'interview' room one level up, which at least had padded chairs. There was a suit waiting for her on the other side of a fancy-looking fake wood desk—he looked up from his Glas just long enough to make eye contact before returning his attention to the screen.

"What is your business on ArcCorp?"

The directness of his question—more of a demand, really—was refreshing. No 'state your name' or 'good evening' shit; he knew her name before she walked through the door, and she had no reason whatsoever to care about his. "I'm meeting a friend," she said with a little shrug.

"For what purpose?"

She knew what he was after: any kind of admission, or anything he could _interpret_ as an admission, that she was a smuggler. She had the look, and he wasn't too far off the mark. She _had_ been a smuggler, among other things. Today, though?

"I got a message. It's with my stuff."

The suit nodded and gestured for one of the goons to go fetch. There was silence while they waited; Penny tried to make her interviewer uncomfortable by staring at him and tapping her foot, but gave up when he failed to react in any way at all. The goon returned, and plopped a box on the suit's desk containing Penny's satchel and gear.

"This is it?" the suit held up the card she'd found taped to the _Chance's_ nose. She nodded. He turned it over—and his eyes widened as he saw the symbol printed on its back. He flipped it back over, scanned the text... and pushed the box across his desk toward Penny. He turned to the helmeted Corpsec goons. "Vogel, Stevens, you can go now." Penny quirked an eyebrow, but got no answer until the goons had left and closed the door behind themselves.

"Well, this is... awkward." The suit shook his head, then stood up and poured a couple drinks. "You're on our watchlist, you see," he explained unnecessarily; Penny had taken that as a given. "I'm supposed to question you, then have you escorted off-planet. This... complicates my position." He unlocked Penny's cuffs and handed her one of the glasses, which was—to her disappointment—filled only with water, then fished around for something in his pocket. He dropped it in her other hand.

It was another one of those coins. Not the one the Tevarin had given her; she was sure of that. Hers had a ribbed edge, while this one was checkered. _So this guy's one of these crazies too?_ Better to play along, then.

"Sorry to jam you up like this, but I gotta see this guy. Big guy, Tevarin. We met a few weeks ago on Terra, then he left me that card."

The suit nodded, stroked his chin, then shook his head. "Haven't had any Tevarin come through here, but that doesn't mean he didn't land somewhere else. That his name on the card?"

Penny shrugged. "Could be. All I know is we ran into the same pack of Scalies together... it was bad. We lost some people." That was all she was willing to say on the subject, and she hoped that the suit wouldn't press further. It would be a shame to have what seemed to be a productive conversation end in something unpleasant.

"Everyone's got a reason," the suit whispered soberly. He took the card again and sat back down behind the desk to type something into his Glas. After a few moments, his head came up again. "Here's the customs record. Sennek Tul Na... Tevarin male, two point five meters, black hair?"

"Sounds about right." She actually didn't remember what color the guy's hair was, but he _had_ been pretty bloody tall.

"He made planetfall two days ago, three districts over. Listed the Tollhouse Bar as his final destination and... left a message for you."

"Any chance you could let me see that?" He re-keyed the display to be viewable from both sides and she leaned in close. _Better late than never,_ it read.

 _I'm gonna kill him_ , she thought. If he'd left her some damned contact info instead of this stupid cliche out of a bad spy flick, she wouldn't be in this corporate hellhole in the first place... not that he had any way of knowing she'd have trouble clearing security. If she'd had more than a slight worry about that herself, she never would have landed. Still...

"Look, I know you aren't supposed to let me through, but it's important. I need to hear what he's got to say." Which was a lie. She was curious, to be sure—curious enough to suffer through an interstellar voyage sealed in a can with aunt Tess—but if it didn't work out, she could still walk away clean. She could probably even get her answers somewhere else; clearly this Pitchfork thing was more widespread than she'd thought.

The suit was clearly torn. He didn't want to go against his superiors, but that symbol had woken something up. If it wasn't loyalty, it was something very close to it, and that was one of the strangest things Penny had ever seen—here was a guy who'd never met her before in his life, whose orders and instincts were telling him to deny entry to her... and yet he was considering just letting her go.

 _He_ is _just letting me go,_ she realized when he logged into his corporate account and a release authorization splashed across the display. "You can pick up your weapons when you leave ArcCorp," he told her, "and I'd caution you not to overstay your welcome here. If you're not offworld by morning..." he shrugged. "It's as good as I can do."

"Thank you," she said, and genuinely meant it. She couldn't tell if the guy was just that gullible or if something else was going on, but he'd stuck his neck out for her and that bought a lot of good will in her book. Not many folks had ever been willing to do that.

"We all have reasons," he explained as she gathered her things and walked out the door.

* * *

Tollhouse, as it turned out, was not exactly the sort of dive Penny expected it to be. While not upscale enough to have a VIP line and a guest list, the front of the building was clean and polished and the patrons looked solidly middle-class. She added it to the list of reasons why her Tevarin 'friend' needed a boot up his ass and elbowed her way past a couple of idiots who were blocking the door. _First stop, bar._

Once armed with strong drink, she took a good look around to get her bearings and take note of anyone who might become a problem. It was a quiet place; the patrons were mostly in small groups at private tables, relaxing to the subtle notes drifting off the band's guitars. There wasn't any sign of...

Someone tapped her shoulder. Her hand reacted instantly, but grabbed only pocket lint, and for a moment panic froze her heart— _Corpsec still has my gun!_ —but as she spun on her heel, she came face-to-belly with the biggest Tevarin she'd ever seen and knew there wasn't anything to fear. It was the same guy from the bar on Terra, the one who'd left her the message telling her to meet him here. Besides, if _this_ mountain of muscle meant her any harm, she was pretty sure shooting him would've just made him angry. A simple hello was inadequate.

"How the _fuck_ can _you_ sneak up on... _anyone?!_ " She looked up for an answer, but he only gestured to an empty booth. There were already drinks waiting—one of which, she noted with amazement, was the same thing she'd been drinking the night she met him. _I'm amazed_ I _even remember._ Evidently the old saw that Tevarin forget nothing wasn't so far off the mark.

"The same way you managed to hold onto that glass," he replied at last with a quirk of his brow, "while you were trying to shoot me with a gun you do not have."

"Everyone's gotta have a talent."

He grinned at that; Penny cringed. It was hard to say exactly what made that smile so disconcerting, but damned if it wasn't the freakiest thing she'd ever seen on a man's face. She downed the rest of the drink in question and finished its replacement just as quickly.

"So what was so important that I had to fly all the way here instead of just meeting you back in Quasi again?"

He shrugged. "This was my home port. The last survivor of my crew is here."

 _Fair enough._

He gestured at her three-fingered right hand. "Did you lose those also, at Elysium?"

Penny closed her eyes and took a deep breath. _Easy does it, Nels. Guy doesn't have a clue._ "No," she said flatly. "And don't ask about them again," she added when he opened his mouth to say something else. His jaw clicked shut; he nodded. Those fingers were between her and her father, and no one else alive.

"The Corpsec suit running customs was in on that suicide mission of yours," she said, putting considerable distance between herself and any discussion of her ghosts. "But I guess you knew that already." The Tevarin laughed, and somehow that was even more unsettling than his grin. _Yeah, damn right he knew. This whole thing is one big setup—I may want to kill my father, but he didn't raise an idiot._

"We are everywhere, Miss Clairmont. We come _from_ everywhere. The one thing we all share is a desire to see the Vanduul driven from our borders."

" _Stars_ , you big dolt. Call me Penny. Or Nels. Anything but... _that._ " He made her sound like a junior executive vice-something-or-other; she didn't want to hear anyone using her family name unless they were _arresting_ her!

"Very well. I presume you know my name already, since you obviously received my message."

"Sennek Tul Na, right?" _Weird name for a Tevarin._ Penny knew a few words of Tevarin, just enough to speak with the handful of aliens in her father's organization, and she was pretty sure this guy's name was a mouthful of gibberish. That made her curious, but it seemed like the sort of thing it was best not to ask about.

"Just Sennek. And now we have been properly introduced." He raised a meaty arm and beckoned for someone to refill their drinks. Penny leaned back so she could look the big guy in the face without craning her neck, crossed her arms, and waited. There was a point here somewhere, and he was taking his own sweet time getting around to it, but she was ready to wait however long it took. After all the trouble of getting here, she wasn't leaving this bar with another damned mystery.

"So here we are," she intoned at last when it was clear that no answers were forthcoming, "in another bar, on another planet, in another _system_... having the same conversation. Anything new to add?" That was probably too much snark. From what little she knew of Sennek's sense of humor, he'd probably... _yup. Shit. He's grinning._

"A proposition," he said simply with a shrug that cast a shadow over the whole table. "If you will listen to it." She nodded slowly. "Good. Since you are here, I will assume that you have decided to act?"

"I've decided to hear you out, big guy. We'll see about the rest."

"That is reasonable. I have been... busy. It was difficult, but I have found the remaining survivors. From Elysium."

 _I think I see where he's going with this._

"You want to put a crew together."

Sennek nodded once—then again, with deep respect, to the waiter who brought their refills. He sipped at his whiskey; as he did so a slightly less spine-tingling smile snaked across his face and he sighed.

"My kind are known for their long memory. And for our inclination to hold grudges. To seek vengeance. Many feel this way towards... _your_ kind. I do not. Those wounds are so long past that those who open their scars are fools. I am an equal of any human in the Empire, a Citizen! At least under the law."

 _I'm not,_ Penny thought. Citizenship was... difficult for someone of her upbringing to attain. Even if it were offered, she wasn't certain she'd accept—what had the Empire ever done for her, anyway? It had tried to kill her a few times; it had tried to imprison her several more times, often with no better cause than that she _looked_ like a pirate. Wasn't Sennek here to convince her to join this 'Operation Pitchfork' to fly off and do what the Empire was _unwilling_ to? Why even bring them up then?

"I am proud of my home," he continued. "It has been good to me—often in spite of itself. I am free, I am in debt to no one, and until a short time ago I traversed the Void between stars. What my kind so often forget is that the Empire could have annihilated us, and chose not to. There is no question that we would have done so had our positions been reversed.

"We are uniquely able to see what the Vanduul are. They are _us_. They are what we were, hundreds of years ago. An enemy that _must_ be fought. Peace is not possible—have they not killed any who offered it to them? Such forces as theirs, and ours, can only be tested in conflict. One must prevail for either to survive. It must be us, for they will not hesitate to kill every human, and every Tevarin with them.

"And now I have dead of my own to avenge. There can be no more delay for me. No more pretense that I may trust in the Empire to do what must be done. Because of this, I have decided to fight with others whose minds are as mine is."

Penny considered her drinking companion for a long moment after he finished speaking. It was a pretty good speech, all things considered. _I wonder if he practiced. Or if he's gone this far out of his way for any of the others who were there that day._

"What's that got to do with me?"

"I find myself without a ship. It is my understanding that yours was not destroyed."

 _His balls must be bigger than the rest of him._

"Look, Sennek, that's not gonna work. Last time the _Chance_ tangled with Vanduul, she didn't come off so good. I still don't have her back together yet." That was largely because she hadn't wanted to even think about it since Elysium, but denial and procrastination aside, her ship _was_ still in pieces.

"That is not the same as a no."

"I..." her voice trailed off. She lifted an eyebrow at him, and her fingers went to the coin in her jacket pocket. "No, it's not." _Am I really going to throw in with this bunch of lunatics?_ But what else was there to do? Make cargo runs with her aunt, who hated her, or go work at the office with her uncle, who'd never stop trying to make her... _fit_ in his world? An alternative was just starting to take shape and it was, in its own way, even more terrifying.

"Okay," she whispered. "I'm in." Then, louder: "but if we're gonna do something this _stupid,_ we're gonna do it right. We need a ship. Like you said... but not the _Fool's Chance._ Something that can take a beating—a _warship._ " There was that damned grin again. Sennek clinked his glass against hers, hoisted it into the air, and swallowed its potent contents in one small—for him—gulp. Penny rolled her eyes, sighed, and downed hers as well. Now that she'd said the words, the flutter in her guts was getting stronger. _What am I doing? Is this why I've fought so hard to_ avoid _going back there?_

"I do not suppose you know where to _find_ a warship?"

"I do," she said. _Several of them. Fully armed, milspec harware. There's only one problem._ "But... it's not gonna be easy to get it. Get them." If she was going to pitch an idea this crazy, then there wasn't any point holding back. _Might as well just go all in._ She couldn't get much worse than dead if it went sideways—not _much_ worse, anyway. "The guy who... 'owns' them? We're not exactly friends." _But we are family,_ she thought. _Maybe that will still count for something._

* * *

 _ **The Past** ** **—** Four years ago—July 31** **st** **, 2940—Nul System.**_

Her father spoke not a word when he stepped through the hatch. That silence was worse than anything he could possibly have said; she knew right away what it meant, and her heart began pounding in anticipation of what had to come next. He drew a pair of metal shears from under his coat and laid them on the table in front of her—stepped back, crossed his arms, and _waited._

 _Hell of a present. Hell of a birthday._

Penny didn't bother pleading. It hadn't worked the first time, and it wouldn't help now—just once, a man had refused, and her father had taken his whole hand instead. The look on his face now said that not even blood would spare her this. She set her jaw and took the shears.

 _I could kill him,_ she thought. _It's an easy shot from so close._ That familiar surge of hope was just fear in disguise. She knew he was faster, and his hand was already at his gun. While her lizard brain screamed at her to run, to fight, to do anything but _this_ , her rational mind knew that she had chosen this the moment she came back empty handed. She could have run—but some dark little part of her wanted to see the look on her father's face. He'd spent months planning that raid—scouting out the right ambush site, shadowing the transport to make sure his intel was solid, waiting for exactly the right moment... he'd wanted his little girl's first big job to be perfect.

She'd warned the target instead, bouncing her telemetry to the terrified captain and lighting up her ship like a solar flare. He'd done the smart thing and fled back through the jump point, taking his valuable cargo—and passengers—with him. She wished that it had been worthwhile—that righteous anger would carry her through the consequences of her actions...

But the price of crossing Quentin Clairmont was always high.

It could have been worse. If the transport captain had chosen instead to fight, if Penny had gotten any of her crew killed or, worse, seriously damaged the _Wendigo_? Dad loved that shitty old Caterpillar. He only let his most trusted lieutenants take her out on jobs, and that he'd trusted her to Penny was nothing less than a vote of ultimate confidence. Which she'd betrayed—his own flesh and blood. It was damned lucky that Matt hadn't been out there with her; Dad would've spaced him for letting so much money slip through his fingers. Even for Penny, though, there was a debt to settle, and she looked her father straight in the eyes as she _paid_ it.

Was it done, or had she only imagined the crunching of bone? She threw the shears at her father's feet, spattering blood across the table and onto the deck. Her vision blurred—from the tears or the pain; it didn't matter. _This wasn't a failure._ That had come years ago, the first time she'd tried to steer her father towards something better.

If what he'd forced her to do affected him at all, he didn't show it. He picked up the shears, wiped them off, and summoned a medic— _a slave_ , she noticed; the man who came to treat the wound where her finger had been wore a broken stare and an electronic bracelet. Didn't her father understand that this was what she wanted him to avoid? There were borders, even for an outlaw. Lines that should never be crossed. _He_ had taught her that, when she was just a little girl! But greed had ruined him. Beaten down and smothered his conscience until the only thing that remained was hunger. A hunger that had cost Penny two fingers and more sleep than he'd ever know.

The slave-medic injected something into her arm and the pain in her hand soon faded, leaving only a dull ache and the muscle-memory of an appendage that was no longer there. _How many pieces of myself do I have to lose before I give up on him?_ The man across the room from her was not the father that had raised her. He was not the Quentin Clairmont who had stolen away with her mother's heart, and for the first time Penny wondered if Victoria Ostler hadn't done the right thing, leaving him before he truly lost himself.

 _What if she didn't leave at all?_ The thought sprung into her mind unbidden, but immediately it dominated her consciousness. She remembered her mother only faintly, but not one of those few blurry recollections was of cruelty. The woman in those hazy memories would not have abandoned her to this! Had her father _killed_ her mother rather than let her go?

And what would he do if he lost his only daughter as well?


	7. Chapter 06

**Chapter 6**

 **The Present—November 30** **th** **, 2944—Starship** _ **Vanilla May**_ **, Deep Space.**

The rendezvous with Tess in orbit was tense, but quickly done. Penny's aunt had a scowl for her at the airlock, but if she'd heard about the brief run-in with the local authorities, she said nothing of it. Penny was pretty sure that was just the way Tess' face was put together anyway—she always acted like she had something to prove.

That was true, in its own way, but Penny just wished the younger woman would lay the hell off. Whatever chip she had on her shoulder over Penny's mother had—or _should_ have had—dick all to do with Penny herself. And yet...

"Don't run the engines so hot," Tess snapped bare minutes after they broke orbit. "We're not in a hurry." Penny wanted to fire back with all the reasons she could think of why it was perfectly fine to run the ship wide open, not least the incredibly robust cooling systems RSI built their Constellations with... but the real reason was the same one she always came back to: the longer she stayed in open space, the more likely she was to get jumped by someone who meant her harm. _Does it even really matter who at this point?_ Between Vanduul raiders, her father's minions, and any Advocacy hotshot looking for a cheap bust, Penny didn't have enough digits left to count the number of times she'd been shot at, shot up, threatened, or arrested—even if the latter never stuck. It simply hadn't occurred to her that, because she wasn't in the _Chance_ , she probably wouldn't be bothered.

Instead of arguing, she bit her tongue and throttled back to three-quarters just to keep Tess happy. _Or at least less unhappy._ She locked in a course for the jump point back to Terra and set the q-drive and autopilot. They had a few hours to kill, so Penny got up and made for the galley.

To Penny's immeasurable surprise, Tess followed—poured herself a cup of coffee, and parked herself opposite Penny at the table. She wasn't really in the mood for another argument—she was still trying to wrap her head around how she'd come to be less at ease in _space_ than on the ground.

"Do you miss it?" The question stunned Penny mid-chomp. She sat there for a long moment with a half-eaten bagel dangling out of her mouth before she decided that she might as well engage. She dropped the rest of her snack in the recycler and sat back, eyes unwittingly narrowed in suspicion. She took a long swig off her hip flask to wash the bagel down and locked eyes with her aunt.

"Miss what?" She knew what Tess was asking, but she wanted her esteemed relative to spell it out. She missed a lot of things these days: Home, Matt... being in the deep black without constantly wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. If this was going to be some kind of fucked up bonding moment, she'd be damned if she was going to wave around the first olive branch after two years of cold shoulders. Tess leaned forward, nesting her chin in one hand while stirring her coffee with the other.

"Don't you ever miss it?" She repeated, clarifying: "The life you left?" Left unspoken was what Penny assumed Tess' real question had to be: _Would you turn back to crime if it was easier?_ The answer to _that_ question wouldn't have gone over too well—she already _had_ gone back. But Tess didn't know why she and Matt had really gone to Elysium.

"You're asking if I want to go back. To my father." _Typical. I couldn't even bitch about a draft in my bunk without her wondering if I was up to something sinister._ She didn't answer—just shrugged and took a long pull from her flask.

Tess didn't miss a beat. "Would you? If you could?"

"Oh... I could." _Any time I wanted to._ Penny hadn't run away because her life had been in danger, although it had been plenty of times _since_ then. It was far simpler than that. "It would cost me," she said, "but yeah, I could."

"Even after everything you've done?" Penny just looked at Tess as though she were a stupid child for even asking that. None of her family outside that life knew _half_ of what she'd done. They weren't naive—not exactly. Their expectations were just... different. Things that seemed entirely normal to Penny would have been criminal at the very least in their world. Immoral? Certainly. But people who lived that kind of life had a very different code of ethics—and it wasn't all the people she'd hurt, it wasn't all the things she'd stolen, or even the lives she'd almost certainly ruined—it was the violation of _that_ code which had made her a pariah.

"Like I said—it'd cost. That's business. I wrenched things good when I left; if I went back I'd owe big for that. See this?" She held up her right hand and waggled the stumps of her two missing fingers. "And thanks for not asking," she said before Tess could say a word; her gratitude was, for once, sincere. Those fingers were nobody's business but hers and Matt's... well, just hers now.

"Yeah." Tess fidgeted. _Good_. It should make her uncomfortable. Little miss perfect student, aced her pilot certs, never been in trouble with the law... the pain of loss was all she'd ever known, and everyone felt that sooner or later. Loss was the one real universal truth.

"Not the first time I got out of line, or cost Dad money. Money is blood—so you pay with blood." _If you fuck up bad enough, the price is something you can't replace._ Any half-assed cyberdoc in the 'Verse could have fixed her hand. That wasn't the point. If she'd shown her face back home one cycle or another with metal fingers, though... _and even after all this time, I'd still rather fumble a spanner because I'm missing bits than face down that shame._

If Tess picked up on even half of what was going through Penny's brain, she made no effort to show it. "So he'd... what, cut something off you and then take you back with open arms?" Question after question. At least she seemed to be past contemptuous dismissal, for whatever that was worth. Lucky she was in a talking mood.

"He'd never trust me again," Penny replied with a little shrug. "Not _now_. Maybe if I hadn't run, but I did. But yeah, he'd take me back. I'm his blood. He can't show weakness, so it'd _cost_ , but no matter how many times I betray him, there'll always be a way back."

"So you're saying that you don't want to." _Still looking for the easy answer, aunt? There isn't one._

Penny thought about that for far, far longer than she was comfortable with. "No," she said at length, softly. "I _want_ to. All the time. I mean... _fuck._ Look at me. I don't belong here. But I won't, see?" She stood up, paced back and forth; a hard edge of bitter resolve crept into her voice. "I _won't_ go back. What _he_ turned into, what he wanted _me_ to turn into... too much. Too far." Then, softer still: "Doesn't mean I don't think about it."

"You're a better person than you give yourself credit for, Penny." A long moment passed in shocked silence. Of all the things she'd never thought to hear, that ranked somewhere between the Imperator marrying a Banu and a newscast announcing the heat death of the 'Verse. What had gotten _into_ Tess, anyway?

Penny rolled her eyes, trying to defuse the awkwardness of their almost-connection. Two years and then some, this woman hadn't wanted a thing to do with her, blood or no blood, no matter what she did to prove herself, and now... _No, she's got to have an angle._ Everyone had an angle. Even the selfless ones like Uncle David—with them it all came back to being that much happier with their reflection in the mirror. Tess had an angle, all right. _Just don't know what it is yet._ "Well," she said at length, picking the nuclear option and dropping it right in her aunt's lap. "I also don't like the thought of cutting off my own hand. Or putting my own eye out. Lost enough bits, feels like. I want to keep the rest."

It took a few seconds, but that punched straight through Tess' semi-sincere mask of concern and understanding. She lifted a hand halfway to her mouth, as if to stifle a gag, then swallowed hard and turned her head away. "Cut your... you mean he'd make you do it _yourself?_ "

"Well, yeah." It didn't make sense to a buttoned-up corp shill who'd been spoon-fed everything she ever accomplished. How could it? "Look," Penny said, exasperated, not even really sure why she was bothering to explain. "He could have any two or three buffs hold me down and take it himself, but what does _that_ prove? That I can bleed? I do it myself, it's what I _want._ Shows him I mean it. That I'll _own_ it and not hold a grudge."

"So..."

"Yeah. I did."

Tess shook her head, as if struck in the face. She hadn't known that. Hadn't even imagined a world where someone might want to cut their own fingers off for an ounce of... what? Forgiveness? Redemption? Hardly. It was just what you did when you fucked up because the only other choice was a long spacewalk with no suit. There were plenty of outlaws out there running around with eyepatches and big scars where one or the other of their ears should be... she'd just made her break before it came to that.

"Like I said—I don't belong here. You think you get all this—" Penny gestured at her Syndicate tattoos, her fingers, her scars- "without being as wrong as the rest of it? I'm not a good person. Trying to be better, but it's a hard sell. Goes against everything I am."

"Well... don't stop trying," Tess said at last, lifting herself from her seat and heading aft. "It's worth the effort," she said over her shoulder as the hatch closed, leaving Penny to stew in uncertainty.

 _Interesting,_ she thought. _I wonder what she's playing at?_ Tess was up to something. She came on like a bloody volcano when she got pissed off, but underneath the temper there was a _scary_ kind of intelligence. No way did a person like that pull a one-eighty and suddenly decide to be besties with her favorite niece whom she'd loathed up until just now; there _had_ to be something else going on. For the moment, it didn't really matter. She'd bring it up with Uncle David the next time she spoke to him—maybe—but she was happy to at least not have anyone on _this_ side of the family gunning for her.

* * *

 **The Present—December 2** **nd** **, 2944—Ostler Transstellar Headquarters—Quasi, Terra.**

Penny flipped through the documents on her Mobiglas, but her head started swimming midway through—she waved it in Frank's face, disgusted to her core. "What. The fuck. Is _this_?"

" _That_ ," he answered back without a moment's hesitation, "is what I was going to tell you before you interrupted. The insurance claim went through just after you left for Stanton, but... well, because of how long you waited to file, and your... imperfect maintenance records, they were only willing to restore the ship to _flying_ condition. No non-critical equipment covered; repair or replacement with refurbished parts where essential."

"That's..." Penny let her voice trail off. _Fucking ridiculous._ It wasn't a high-end policy, but it was supposed to _at least_ cover the cost of putting the _Chance_ back the way she was before getting blown to pieces!

"That's _entirely normal_ ," Frank finished. "David told you to put that claim in as soon as possible, and so did I. You had those forms in hand less than a week after Elysium; you've been sitting on them for _months_. If you had attached your ship to the _company_ policy, as you should have when you hired on, then _our_ mechanics would have taken care of routine maintenance, and the claim would have been submitted as soon as the damage could be assessed. You have no one but yourself to blame."

 _I will not punch my uncle in the face. I will not punch my uncle in the face. I will not punch my uncle in the face._ What did it matter how long she'd waited after Elysium to send the forms in?! That didn't change the facts involved! Hull insured. Hull damaged. Hull repaired. That seemed like it should be pretty damned simple. Instead... _"Delay in filing indicates low priority. Inaccurate pre-incident ship data resulting from deferred or improperly reported maintenance. Failure to provide records of ship's condition as-purchased."_ The list went on and on. The insurance company was all but accusing her of fraud—as though she could have _faked_ the holes the Vanduul had punched in her ship.

Her uncle Frank's dogged insistence on bringing up every single complaint he'd ever had with the _Fool's Chance_ right this very minute was not helping. "That ship is a hazard to anyone and any _thing_ that flies in it. Did you know I have to charge double for insurance on any cargo we ship in that heap?" His voice was rising by the second, and every moment Penny remained silent he grew bolder. "I won't authorize a loan for further repairs, either. David has given you far too much latitude, Penny. You're a fine pilot, and nobody here will question that much, but as far as your _judgment_ is concerned-"

"Frank. Leave." Penny's voice was barely a whisper, but so full of menace that it drove her uncle's mouth shut with an audible click. He did not leave, though—just stood there, _hrmphed_ at nothing in particular, and crossed his arms.

A few uncomfortable seconds of dead air passed between them before Frank risked another glance back at her. "I don't see what-" he began, but then his eyes fell to Penny's side where her hands had curled into fists... not merely from anger, but in fighting form.

"Leave. Right. _Now_." This time her words struck home, and Frank retreated into the hall. Penny waited until he was well out of sight. She closed the door very, very gently—then grabbed the nearest thing to hand that looked breakable and hurled it across the room with all her might.

The coffee mug proved more resilient than it looked—it bounced off the window plas and rolled harmlessly on the floor. She kicked it around a few more times just for the satisfaction, but to no better effect than to leave a scratch on the wall.

David stared back at Penny over steepled fingers, his face more apologetic than Frank's but no more compromising. "I'm afraid that Frank's right on this one, Penny. I can't divert company resources for private use—not even for family. Our shareholders would see it as the same kind of corruption that almost shut us down the first time, and we're not in a place where we can take a risk like that."

She tossed a black braid over her shoulder and landed heavily on the office couch, arms crossed. "So... what? You're _firing_ me?"

"Not at all." He inhaled deeply, shoved back from the big hardwood desk, and gazed out the window at the landing pads—and the _Fool's Chance_ where she sat on the tarmac, still charred from her fateful battle yet supposedly ready to fly again. "You're still one of our best pilots—you make your deliveries on or ahead of schedule, you don't skim, and... well, you have a bit of a reputation. We have a few clients who are, shall we say, very appreciative of your willingness to fight to protect their shipments."

"What." Now _there_ was something new. Having a reputation was something that Penny was well accustomed to, but on _this_ side of the law? That was pretty rich. Straight-laced corpos asking for her by name _because_ she looked and acted the part of an outlaw? _Matt would have lost his shit. He'd have laughed that stupid hat off his shiny-ass head and died._

"I want you to stay on with us, Penny." David turned back from the window to look her in the eye. "I just need you to fly _company_ ships when you're on company time from now on. You've proven that you can handle any hull in our fleet, so... take your pick, and you've got the assignment. It's that simple."

"You want me to just leave the _Chance_ in the hangar. After all that. _You're_ the one talked me out of selling her after Elysium, remember?"

"I know, and I'm sorry—but it's only temporary. Once things with the insurance company are cleared up and you get her in for a _proper_ overhaul, I'll talk to Frank and have her put back on flight status... but until then, I can't put OTS cargo in a ship that's not 100%."

It took a moment to click, but she got a handle on it before David could say anything more. "Back up. What do you mean about the insurance company?" He sounded almost as upset as she was. Could it be...?

"I'd just assumed that you wanted to dispute their findings," David said with a little shrug. "I handed it off to our attorney this morning on your behalf. He's reviewing the case, and if it looks good he'll take it before the magistrate by the end of the week. Unless you'd rather not bother."

 _Unless I'd rather not... fuck that! Of course I want to bother!_ "I thought you said you couldn't use company resources for..."

"It's not on company time, Penny. Whether or not the man's an employee of mine, I can still hire him for a private case with private funds. _My_ funds. This _is_ a family matter, after all."

She thought about that for a moment, then nodded. Loath as she was to be indebted to anyone, having the _Chance_ back in fighting trim again was more important than pride. Besides, unlike the _other_ side of her family, Uncle David was not likely to demand a blood price if she didn't make good on her end of the bargain.

"Okay," she said, with a wry smile. "Take it to court. S'better than what I had in mind."

"Good. I can't make any guarantees, but we should see some action in a few months' time if things go well." He motioned to his desk—his way of asking her to clear out so he could get some work done. She got up, started for the door... then paused and looked back.

"You know," she said, "there's something you're forgetting."

"And that is?"

Penny tapped the side of her head. " _Reputation._ Remember? You say there's a bunch of clients who want me on the job for my rep, right? Ships have a rep too, y'know. Doesn't matter who the pilot is; they fly somewhere off the map in a shiny new _target_ , they're _gonna_ get hit. Something looks like the _Chance_? That'll do you just as good as a whole squadron of escorts. Or better. Escorts just mean the loot's worth the risk."

She had David's attention. He crossed his arms, leaned back against the desk, and painted on that expression he always got when he didn't want to be seen as agreeing to something too eagerly. "Okay," he said. "Make your point."

Now _this,_ she was ready for. Penny brought up a starmap on her Mobiglas, then filtered it for all of Ostler Transstellar's established shipping routes. "We get routes out to Odin, Bremen, Vega... places anyone else has to take the long way or go heavy. Why d'you think I make delivery faster?" She cleared off the overlay and traced her own path—cutting across lawless space each time, shaving as many as three jumps off each route. She turned back to David and stuck a thumb over her shoulder at the revised transit map. "I can go places nobody else in this company can. It's not because of who I am, it's because of _what I fly_. Any pirate pings the _Chance_ , they don't see a target. They see one of their own."

It was only partly true—if it was one of her father's men, or someone chasing the price on her head, then they'd see a target all right... but David didn't need to hear about that part. The odds of running into trouble like that were _far_ slimmer than getting hit if she tried the same routes with a ship that looked like it was fresh off the dealer's lot. Unless the other guy actually recognized the _Chance_ by sight, they wouldn't even buzz her comm... and they'd have to get close enough for a visual, because like any outlaw ship worth her hull plates the _Chance_ always ran through dark space with her beacon off.

David's face made it obvious that he wasn't a fan of that particular aspect of Penny's reputation, but he was a businessman through and through. She could see the gears turning behind his eyes until finally something clicked into place.

"Alright, you've convinced me. I'll talk to Frank and make the arrangements." He lifted a hand to stop her before she could reply, though. "There will be conditions, though." He raised one finger. "Spaceworthy or not, the _Chance_ goes in for maintenance every three months like any other ship in the fleet." David waited for Penny to nod her assent before he raised a second finger. "You take no unnecessary risks with your cargo or yourself." Another nod; a third finger went up. "You make no unauthorized stops." Penny hesitated, then nodded—it was easy enough to doctor up the ship's log to make a layover disappear, and Uncle David couldn't possibly know exactly how long a transit across outlaw space would take. David raised a fourth and final finger. "You hire a crew that I can put on the company records."

This time, Penny didn't hesitate; she nodded once more, almost enthusiastically. That had been the plan all along—and the applications were already pending approval. She had just the guy in mind for a copilot; one her straight-laced relatives would sign off on without a second thought. She didn't know him all that well yet but, to the best of her knowledge, the big lunk had never broken a single law in the whole of his life.

* * *

 **The Past—April 2944—two days before Elysium—Hurston, Stanton.**

Penny was upside-down, hip-deep in the _Chance's_ avionics bay when a familiar tapping on the deckplates made her plant the back of her skull in the disconnected flight recorder. She swore a streak in two languages she knew and six others she didn't, pounded the outer hull with her fist, and finally wriggled back out the hatch to find Matt crouching over her with a six-pack and a scowl. Penny grabbed one of the beers—then thought better of it and grabbed another to hold against the growing lump on her head while she poured the first one down her throat.

"Still can't figure out why there's no reading from nacelle two?"

She glared at him and grabbed another beer to replace the one she'd just killed. "I thought you were history," she muttered sourly.

Matt shrugged. There wasn't much to say to that; they hadn't exactly left things in a good place the last time they spoke. Certain words were exchanged that couldn't be so easily tossed out the airlock... but somehow Penny wasn't that surprised to see him, and Matt didn't look too surprised to be squatting there. "Thought I was too."

"Why'd you come back?" He hadn't thought too highly about Penny's scheme to secure a sizeable cut of a willing smuggler's haul. She'd blown up at him. Probably not the smartest thing to do, but when a seven-figure payday had practically dropped itself in her lap and Matt had told her to _walk away_ from it...

Another shrug. He took his bowler hat off long enough to fetch the cigar he always kept in it, replaced it, and stuffed the stogie between his lips. "Got as far as the orbital. Stuck it out for a bit... couldn't think of anywhere to go that called out." Which was more or less his way of saying that he wanted to come back five minutes after leaving, but didn't want to look desperate. Not that Penny hadn't spent the past few weeks wishing like hell she'd been less of an ass but not doing anything to fix it either... they were both remarkably good at pretending not to give a damn even when they did.

' _I'm'_ and _'sorry'_ were the first words that came to mind. "What makes you think I'll keep you on?" were the words that came out instead. _Nice, moron. Way to apologize._ She'd never been good at that. Another thing they had in common.

Matt cracked a beer for himself, took another for a refill, and tossed the last one to Penny. She chuckled at the gesture—two thirds of a six-pack was as close as she was going to get to a peace offering. Still, she knew what it meant and accepted the can with a slight nod.

"Figure we'll just call it even and leave it lie," Matt grunted over a mouthful of brew. "Still got creds on the brain?" he asked—Penny snorted; Matt sighed and nodded slowly. "Figured you would. Don't guess there's any talking you outta that."

"It's what I know, Matt." It always kept coming back to the same old shit. _Take what you can—nobody'll give it to you._ It seemed like no matter where she went, she needed to already _have_ something before she could _get_ anything. Until she caved and went to beg Uncle David for a job, that had been the refrain: she couldn't get a job without experience, and she couldn't get experience without a job. Even now, with _nepotism_ on her side, it had been slow going.

"I know, Nels. I get it. I just thought... dunno. That we were gonna try to find something else. Something better." Matt wasn't wrong. Penny knew that this smuggling gig flew opposite everything they'd been working for these past few years, but... she slumped against the bulkhead and sighed.

"I thought that it would be... I don't know, easier, maybe. Or that I'd at least feel better about it... but I can't. It's still... I dunno. Shit. Just smells different is all." Matt said nothing—just sipped his beer, puffed his cigar, and let her speak her piece. "Do the same thing every day, over and over, always on someone else's time... maybe in thirty or forty years settle down somewhere and get wrinkly. I can't live that way. Fat, old, and grinning is your idea of a good way to go, but it's too quiet. Feels too much like fading away.

"I want to... _live_. Get out there and _see_ things! Not have to think about having somebody take my ship away if I don't... pay my taxes or something. I mean, I hated the other side too, but at least there was _that_ much freedom to it!"

"So you gonna go back?" The question left her speechless for a long moment. It wasn't that she'd never thought about it, but the _cost_ of going back, squaring things with her father, reasserting her rep... Matt knew as well as she did how expensive it would be, and in far more than credits.

"No," she declared at last. "I never said that. I know you think it's stupid how I'm going about it, but I want to get out, Matt. _All_ the way out. I don't know if chasing a big score is the best way to do it, but it's the only way I _know_. And you know me... I know when to cut and run, Matt, and I lost a lot more last time than some money I never had to begin with, right? You _know_ I won't take it too far."

"Are you sure about this?"

"As sure as I am about... anything, I guess."

Matt scratched his head. "Then... hell, I wanted to leave. Still do. But you know I won't let you stick your neck out alone."

 _No, you wouldn't._ He'd put his ass on the line for her before he'd even known her name. "Yeah," she said, downed her last two beers, and jumped to her feet. Things were going well today on the balance; she had Matt back, she was starting to get a nice buzz going, and the _Chance_ was mostly ready to go. _Good time to get the rest of this crap done before I don't feel like doing it anymore._ "Hey, get up on number two and see if you can pin down that telemetry sensor. Gotta be at that end, didn't see it down in the guts."

"Gotcha. Damnfool thing's prolly not even plugged in."—and just like that they were back. The worst fight she'd ever had with Matt... trace gas out the airlock in ten minutes flat. Penny let an honest smile twist her lips as she got back to work. _Yeah, good day. Kept a friend, still flying, still gonna get paid._ What else could she really ask for?


	8. Chapter 07

**Part 2**

 **Chapter 7**

 **The Past—May 2936—Clairmont Syndicate Headquarters: Ninevah Station.**

Penny swung around her ship's landing strut, pumping a fist in the air, as several well-built cargo handlers emptied out the hold. A few people stopped to whistle and clap—at the sweet haul or the show; who gave a shit? It was a hell of a good day! She popped open her flask and took a deep swig, almost coughing on the fumes, and stomped the deck gleefully.

"AaawhOO! This evening's _party_ brought to you by _The! Fool's! Chance!_ Howyadoin Lex—look, I _got_ your fifty! Get off my _back_ , bitch! Yee _AH_!"

Matt strolled casually down the ramp after the last of the crates, lit the squashed half-cigar he'd 'liberated' from one of the freighter pilots, and managed to almost look thoughtful while he puffed on it heavily. Penny snuck up behind him and vaulted up on his shoulders—which, true to form, utterly failed to provoke a reaction.

"Oh _c'mon!_ You just _gotta_ be amped, man! We just made _bank!_ Maybe enough to get you a decent _hat_ ," she teased, knocking Matt's bowler off his head. He shrugged her off, hooked a toe under the beat-up old thing, and flipped it neatly back up onto his polished dome.

"Eh, s'alright," he muttered around the stogie. "Be good scratch for a bit." Penny rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm, which she was pretty sure hurt her knuckles more than his bicep. She was about to have another go at getting under his skin when she caught sight of her father out of the corner of her eye.

The bay fell silent—more or less. Quentin Clairmont strode quickly, but confidently, across the grease-stained deck towards his daughter. She grinned and waved, but if he was feeling particularly celebratory he didn't show it.

"Tell me how it went," he said plainly and without greeting or preamble. Penny motioned with both arms towards the massive pile of black security crates sitting beside the _Chance_.

"You should've seen it! We dropped on those suckers so fast they didn't even _fight_!" Beside her, Matt inclined his head to confirm the account. It was a hell of a righteous take—two freighters loaded down with a shipment of militia gear heading off to nowhere important. Penny's eyes swam in credit signs; there was enough for some upgrades in there, for sure.

Her father nodded slightly and the corner of his lip quirked—the nearest she'd ever get to a smile out of him, but just then it felt like something well worth celebrating. "What sort of cargo were they carrying?" he asked, sizing up the pile of loot.

"What _weren't_ they carrying? Guns, grenades, armor... Dad, it's a fuckin' arsenal! We could roll down on _Earth_ with this shit!"

"Let's not get carried away" said the elder Clairmont, dryly. "Hostages?" He sounded almost _bored._ Penny waved her arm over towards where Vargas' tub, the _Halfstake_ , was parked.

"Took the captains—both freighters, and all three escort pilots." That part sucked, but at least she'd gotten them to let the rest of the crews go. Pilots and certified captains were valuable, and whatever company they worked for would pay good money to get them back alive and unharmed. Their crews, on the other hand, were replaceable, and that piece of shit Vargas would have just as soon spaced them or taken them for slaves.

Quentin Clairmont merely _hrmphed_ and motioned for Vargas, who was still in his cockpit, to come down and join them. As far as such things went, Penny's father was more inclined towards his other subordinates' methods—his own child was far too _soft_ for his liking, and she knew it. As far as she was concerned the old man was turning into a royal sonofabitch... but he'd come around. After all, if he shot or spaced or enslaved all the crews that flew through his haunts, then they'd just find new routes and cut off the buffet, right? He had to see that. Of _course_ he saw that.

Vargas, smug fuck that he was, marched out of his ship with all five prisoners in line behind him. The reality was that he'd only boarded _one_ of the ships—Stumpy in her _Warbler_ took the other freighter, and _Penny_ had been the one who rounded up the escorts... but Vargas was nothing if not a glory-stealing asshole, and it was pretty clear he meant to take credit for the whole job. He was running the show this time out, so as soon as it was done he insisted on bringing all the prisoners aboard his own ship. Penny hadn't argued... better that than the chance of having to shoot one of them if they got it in their heads to escape. Vargas was a scary bastard; they probably wouldn't try anything with him breathing down their necks.

He brought them up close enough for Quentin to look over, but not so near that any of them could have made a move. They looked terrified to a one, but a couple still managed to look surprised when they saw the impeccably groomed and finely dressed crime boss standing in front of them—he must have seemed ridiculously out of place at first glance, standing next to a heavily tattooed girl with a lime green mohawk and a rough-and-tumble thug in a funny-looking hat. Penny's father looked the part of a debonair businessman in a den of thieves, and only a dragon's tail peeking out from under his collar suggested that he might belong in this world that he owned. Nevertheless, he exuded an air of absolute and total calm—and the way that everyone hung on his word, there was no question who was in charge on this station.

"Are these all of them?" he said, managing without effort to sound disappointed. Five hostages must have looked like small stuff next to Penny's giant pile of loot, even though they were probably worth about the same. Vargas fidgeted, then nodded.

"Yeah, boss. Yer girl thought we'd get more outta 'em if we let a few go."

"Shows good faith," she interjected before he could spin the thing against her. "Nobody'd pay up if we squikked the rest."

"Anyway," Vargas continued, shooting her a poisonous glare, "the tall one and the fat one are _shareholders._ Oughtta be worth somethin' anyhow."

Quentin nodded, but his expression turned mildly dour. He wasn't convinced—Penny could tell; he got a look in his eye when he thought someone had fucked up. How, she wasn't sure. As near as she could tell, the job had gone smooth as synsilk. Maybe it was something Vargas _hadn't_ done? That was worth poking to see if she could knock the shithead down a few more pegs.

"I got the escorts. Coupla Auroras, an Avenger. Vargas was gonna frag 'em, but we ripped out the beacons; my crew flew 'em back." That caught her father's attention. Cargo and hostages were one thing—whole ships were quite another. It was relatively hard to make a freighter disappear, but a single-seat fighter? Ships like those went missing all the time out in the black. Nobody was going to send a search party out for _those,_ and if the pilots got ransomed out they could tell their insurance company exactly what happened. Total write-off on their end; one hundred percent profit for the Syndicate.

"Good work," he said in a tone that _almost_ sounded like approval. She wagged her eyebrows at Vargas. _Point: me._ It was petty, but he deserved it. The older pirate stared daggers in her direction... but she wasn't worried. Let him be pissed—after he'd let her beat his ass and humiliate him the last time they raced snubs, there wasn't much he could _do_ short of killing her, and he knew damn well what her father would do to him if _that_ happened.

"Inventory the hardware," Quentin said to no one in particular, "and get whatever you can out of _them_." Without another word, he turned and strode briskly away, his usual lackeys trailing along behind. Vargas stewed in his impotent rage a moment longer, then stormed off with the prisoners.

Penny sighed and turned to Matt, who was still calmly puffing away at the last few centimeters of his stolen cigar. He looked at her, shrugged, and tossed her a can that had somehow appeared in his hand when she wasn't watching. She cracked it, downed it, and heaved it against the _Chance's_ starboard engine pod—the empty bounced, rolled, and came to rest next to the loot.

" _Fuck's_ his problem, anyway?" But she knew what the problem was: all this work was small shit to her father. He was pushing hard to open up new smuggling routes and make deals with big-time suppliers; knocking over transports didn't fit with his vision of efficient profit. If he was excited about the hulls she'd captured, it was because he could turn them around as disposable drug runners. It was just a matter of having Taz fake up IDs for them good enough for one or two trips.

"Y'did good," Matt offered. "Be happy."

"Oh, so _you're_ the one who wants to party now?"

"I could live a bit." He tossed Penny another beer and opened one for himself.

She shook her head—a few more and whatever brought her down wouldn't matter. She plopped down on top of a crate full of frags and chugged round two, chasing it with a hit of Racker's homemade trash from her flask. "Yeah, keep sayin' that. I ever see you crack a smile I might believe it." She was grinning again, now. Trace gas out the airlock. She was on Dad's good side today—or whatever passed for one with him, these days.

"It's a good day, Nels" said Matt at last, flicking the dead stub of his cigar. "Still here, still breathin'. That'll do me fine."

Penny never could understand why her best friend did or didn't do _anything_ , but... hell with it. Didn't matter. He was right—she had enough for today. Good loot, a good ship, a good copilot, and the only person she'd pissed off hated her already so he didn't count.

 _Yeah, man. It's a good day._

* * *

 **The Present—February 13** **th** **, 2945—Cathcart.**

It had to have been nearly six years since the last time the light of Cathcart had filled her cockpit, but as soon as the _Fool's Chance_ cleared the jump from Nexus, Penny already felt more in her element than at any time in the last half decade. Not so long ago, that would have made her deeply uncomfortable—this was a place, one of several, that she had tried very hard to avoid since leaving her father's Syndicate, but coming here now didn't feel like a betrayal of her 'new' life. She had a purpose this time. A mission. A way to finally turn her _old_ life into something to be proud of, if only for the connections it had left her with.

Her new copilot squirmed his way into the back seat, without complaint but obviously uncomfortable with the arrangements. Sennek was a big guy, even for a Tevarin, and she felt sorry for him having to fit into a ship designed for pilots of normal human stature... but ripping out half the furniture in the ship and replacing it just wasn't in the budget right now. She'd had a hell of a time just getting the _Chance_ up and running again, and there were still other things— _critical_ things, like shields and weapons—that needed attention before anything relating to comfort.

Sennek waited until they were in sight of their destination before he asked the question she'd been anticipating ever since they took off from Quasi. "Are you ever going to tell me why we are here?"

Penny checked her heading and swung out to sit sideways so she wouldn't have to talk over her shoulder. She needn't have bothered; the big guy wasn't looking at her anyway; he was staring out the cockpit window at the misshapen mass of the one and only Spider, which quickly grew to fill the entire starscape.

"There's this guy I know," she offered at last. "Taz. Old friend... kinda. If there's anything worth knowing in the dark, Taz'll know it. He used to work outta Nul; he an' Dad were real close for a while."

"You have never said anything kind about your father's associates. Do you trust this man?"

"Well... yeah. I mean, they were tight, but Taz is a freelancer. Inker, info broker, fixer- that kind of thing. Every time I got ink, Taz put it on. He'll help."

"That does not explain-"

"Look, you're just gonna have to trust me. If you want those ships I told you about, then this is how we get them. This is the best way to get in touch with Dad." The only way, in fact—other than letting another one of the goon squad track her down and haul her back home in a cage. The only way to set up a meeting with the old man without losing any more body parts. She could see that Sennek still wasn't satisfied, but there wasn't anything else she could offer—not yet, anyway. He seemed solid enough, but the trust just wasn't there yet.

She sighed. "It's complicated, big guy. I told you, we're not on good terms." All families had arguments, but _most_ families' arguments didn't end up with live grenades being thrown around. That didn't leave a whole lot of room for friendly reunions... even if they _were_ only flashbangs.

Sennek looked distracted; his gaze twitched, and he rubbed his eyes. He fiddled around with his console for a moment, then located the source of his discomfort: the fan hanging above the copilot's seat. He made to switch it off.

"What are... no wait! Don't touch tha-"

Penny lunged, but couldn't quite grab his wrist in time. Sennek flicked the switch, and every light in the cockpit instantly went dead. He sat there slack-jawed for a moment, then whistled long and low.

"You told me that the insurance company ripped you off, but I did not know it was this bad." He turned the fan back on and shook his head slowly.

 _No_ , she thought: _It was worse. The stingy bastards didn't even replace the music roll in the head._ She was tired of bitching about that. After spending several weeks running around making statements to guys in fancy suits—whose job it was to stand around and argue over whether or not the insurance company should do what it was _paid_ to do—Penny was just plain done with the subject.

"Nah," she said with a little shrug. "That's been busted forever now. The suits fucked up plenty, but I gotta own that one. _Great_ story though."

"I am not sure I want to ask," Sennek sighed.

Penny grinned. The story involved a pissed off _bear_ in the cockpit, tearing up all the wiring... which she and Matt had then pieced back together as best they could by hand after finally tranquing the thing. Nobody ever believed _that_ one, but it was the one and only story that Penny never had to embellish. She was just getting her game face on when she saw Sennek's expression.

"C'mon—you sayin' _you_ don't have any stories about shit that didn't work on your ship?" That was a whole second way of life for spacers. Damn near _everyone_ she'd ever asked had a dozen different tales about how their ship or something on it had almost killed them 'that one time.' Most of those stories were bullshit, but the very best hid more than a few grams of truth.

"Nothing worth exaggerating," Sennek said after a thoughtful moment. "The landing gear sometimes squealed when it extended."

"Wow. Buddy, just... _wow._ You have _got_ to get out more."

They were only a few minutes out now—it was time to gear up. Penny found a conveniently-sized chunk of starship debris and brought the _Chance_ to rest in its shadow. "Okay, we should be fine for a while here. C'mon, we gotta get you ready." She beckoned him to follow her aft.

There was a deckplate beside the belly hatch that she used to stash gear in; it popped off easily when she released the hidden latch with her knife. Inside were the makings of a small revolution: several pistols of different types, a shotgun, two chopped assault rifles, knives of every shape and size, and slightly more than a dozen grenades. She picked out the largest pistol she had, a wicked looking fifty-centimeter blade, and two flashbangs. The latter immediately vanished into her pockets—the former two, she offered up to Sennek.

It looked as though the big Tevarin's eyes were about to pop out of his head. Penny jabbed him in the belly with the butt of the pistol, trying to get him to take it. "Sen, man, c'mon."

"I do not want these, Penny."

"No, you _need_ them. Take 'em. C'mon, they're not gonna bite."

"I would rather not."

"Look, jackass, you're not going in there without a weapon."

"Could I not wait on the ship?"

"Oh for fuck's... Sennek! Take. The fucking. _Gun._ "

"I will not use it."

"Yes, you _will._ I'm not gonna go looking for a fight, man, but if one comes looking for _me_ then you are _damned_ well going to be there. You came to _me_ , remember? Or was all that Pitchfork revenge talk just hot air?"

"This is not the same."

"It's _exactly_ the same. If you're gonna leave me hang, then find yourself another pilot because there's no fucking chance I'll fly with someone who doesn't have my back."

He ground his teeth for a moment, but finally nodded. "I... very well." Still grumbling, he belted on the proffered weapons—but not before checking the pistol's functions thoroughly.

 _Good. Not the first time he's handled one._ Penny was half in a mind to kick her own ass for not making sure of that before they left Terra, but there wasn't any point worrying about it now. Either he'd be good enough, or he wouldn't. Chances were he wouldn't have to use the thing anyway. She patted her holdout gun, secure in its vest-pocket holster... then, on a second thought, grabbed the shotgun and slung it over her shoulder. She was very good with her little pistol, but if serious shit went down then she wanted something that could make chunky salsa.

Satisfied, Penny headed back up front and got the _Chance_ back in motion.

Flying into the Spider was not for the feint of heart. Not only were there ships buzzing every which way without their beacons running, there was no centralized traffic control and few facilities that offered automated docking. Those that did tended to be the ones where the occasional too-brave tourist lashed up—and were consequently the most dangerous places in the whole cluster of wreckage. It was not a place with a regular pattern one could learn—the Spider did not have a form; it had a _flow_ , and navigating the intricate web of derelicts, wrecks, and captive asteroids was far more instinct than memory. There were few static structures and no hard-cast rules about new construction, so it was a rare visit here where the Spider looked the same way as it had the trip before.

That wasn't to say that there was no directional assistance whatsoever; far from it. If you knew where you were going, you could ping the nearest beacon and it would squawk back—but finding your way _to_ that beacon was entirely down to your skill as a pilot. Penny was doubly careful; although Taz had his own beacon, she didn't want the attention that pinging it might draw, so she bounced Crossways—the nearest free market—and hoped the damned thing hadn't drifted too far out of position since the last time she swung by.

Sennek uttered not a single word as the _Chance_ wove her way through the vast network of havens, markets, and hideouts. He was transfixed; his face glued to the cockpit window, watching bits of cannibalized history glide awkwardly past. There was no hope for him, Penny realized. No way was anyone going to buy that big goof as an outlaw. He was like a kid on his first interstellar hop, dinnerplate eyes and everything.

Penny recognized some of the hulls here—they were getting close. She slid around the hulk of a Starfarer that served as the local fuel depot and suddenly had a dozen different turrets tracking her. There was a procedure here... of sorts. She powered down the _Chance's_ weapons and main engines, leaving the shields on full while braking to a dead stop, and blinked the running lights a few times. A few minutes later, the comm crackled and a bored-sounding voice came through.

"What'cha want?"

"Need a bay on Crossways," Penny answered curtly.

"Six, I think. It's-"

"Yeah, I know it. Kill the cannons, willya?"

"Done. Seeya."

On the whole, Penny vastly preferred dealing with pirate 'etiquette' to making nice with officious twits who thought space traffic control was their one great opportunity to order people around. You either got right to the point, or you got ignored; if you failed to signal or answer back, or got too close too fast, you got blasted. _Simple_. Penny winked over her shoulder—Sennek's jaw hung open.

He was doubtless well accustomed to procedures and delays, and had no idea how a place like this could even exist without them. She declined to tell him any of her funny stories about docking mishaps which inevitably resulted from everyone doing whatever pleased them... she was worried it might make the poor guy's brain implode. Thus cleared through what passed for 'customs' in the Cathcart system, Penny gave the mains a burp and set them gliding toward their destination.

Crossways was a space station assembled from the abandoned hulks of two different ex-Navy escort carriers, kludged together keel to keel, with one ship's hangar bays serving as the port and the other's serving as a grand bazaar. To their sides were attached innumerable modules and struts supporting an array of docking ports, nearly all of which were occupied by ships of all shapes and sizes and in all different states of repair. Some were temporary additions to the market: nonaligned smugglers and pirates hawking their ill-gotten gains to whosoever would buy them. Others were there to buy, or to lay low, or just because their tired drives could carry them no farther.

As the ungainly construct twisted lazily around the axis of the docking hull, Penny saw a familiar shape come into view: a lone Banu Merchantman, the only alien ship of the lot, docked snugly up by the business tower that had been built in and around the bazaar carrier's old command decks.

"Sen, take a look—that's Taz, right over there. We got lucky—I thought we'd have to ask around for him."

"He is not always here?"

"He does all his business out of that ship—never leaves it. Wherever he has to go, that's where he ties her up. This might-" she immediately broke down laughing, slapping her knee and the console.

"Might what?" asked Sennek, in between peals of laughter.

" _Oh_ man. Wow. I almost said 'this might be easier than I thought.' _Damn_ I've been clean too long!"

"You expect trouble?" Clueless to the last. This was clearly going to become a theme... how had this guy ever been made first mate of a starship? _Oh right. Square._ Spacer he might be, but there wasn't a rogue bone in the big Tevarin's body.

" _Stars_ ," she gasped out, "look where we _are_. This whole _place_ is trouble. Especially if you go in looking like food." Which Sennek was—no doubt about it. A big 'ol bleating sheep among wolves. Penny was just hoping that _her_ presence would discourage the adventurous... if not, well—that was what the guns were for.

She kept the shields up until she was almost at the docking bay; there was a lot of debris floating around Crossways, and having somebody's errant spanner wedge itself in one of her intakes just wasn't on the list of things to do today. Surprisingly, the bay she'd been directed to—number six—was actually empty when she got there. Odds were pretty good that the watchdog who'd contacted her was only tossing a number out to shut her up, so Penny took the nod from Lady Luck and guided the _Chance_ inside before anyone else could claim the vacancy.

The moment Penny killed the engines, a tide of human filth cascaded through the inner bay door and surrounded the ship. That wasn't typical of everywhere in the Spider, but for Crossways it was everyday life. Half of them were probably looking to convince her that she owed them docking fees, but Penny knew better. She popped the cockpit hatch and jumped out onto the wing—then stuck two fingers in her mouth and whislted as loudly as she could manage.

" _Oi!_ " Most of the heads in the hangar turned in her direction. She made sure they all saw her _before_ she motioned for Sennek to come out and seal the hatch behind him. Then she whistled again, made a circular motion with her arm, and pointed back at the hangar door. " _Fuck off!"_ she bellowed. A few of them ignored her, but the greater part of the crowd shuffled back the way they'd come.

Penny slid off the leading edge of the wing and jumped down to the deck. She looked around at the handful of people still in the hangar and, finding the one she wanted, caught his attention and beckoned him over. The grubby kid, no older than ten, smiled and puffed up his chest as he sauntered over to meet the new arrivals.

"Eya, bigs! Whas it for?" He raised a hand, palm up, towards Penny.

"Need a favor. Think your crew can keep my girl here in one piece while I nose around some?"

"May. Whas it _for?_ "

Penny smiled and dropped a credit chit into the kid's outstretched hand. It vanished instantly, but she knew that somewhere under his poncho there was a chipjack he'd slotted it into as soon as it touched his fingers. A moment later the kid nodded—whoever was reading the other end of the datastream was talking to him. The toothy smile widened and the kid nodded at her vigorously.

" _Good_ good! Ya gal's safe wid'us. Go play!"

Penny held up a hand when the kid started to turn away; he stopped, quizzical. She thumbed over her shoulder at two other hangers-on standing by the cargo lift who were a little bit too interested in their conversation. With her other hand, she palmed the kid another credit chit.

"Fade those chumps for me, willya?"

He giggled and patted her on the knee.

"Gon' take 'em on best ride, bigs. No suf."

It was one of the first things anyone with a working brain learned about the Spider, no matter what part of it they wanted to visit: ignore the station rats at your peril. Sure, some wanna-be thug with their crew of meatheads _might_ be able to do the job, but they'd more likely take your money and disappear—if they didn't decide to take your ship, too. The best hangar security was _rat_ security. Nobody messed with those kids—the collection of orphans, cast-outs, and runaways that grew up in places like these spent a great deal of time crawling around in the enviro ducts, and people who weren't good to them tended to meet all sorts of unpleasant fates.

There was an old axiom among spacers: _he who controls the air, owns the ship_. The rats rarely had any interest in local politics, but they'd damn sure make your life hell if you crossed them. The vent in your quarters might start making noises at odd hours, or you might come home one day to find that something dead was rotting just out of reach up the ductwork. Or, of course, if you _really_ wronged the rats, they might just cut off your air and suffocate you in your sleep.

If, on the other hand, you paid fair and didn't condescend when you asked them for a favor... everything had a price, and rats were remarkably consistent. They had to be; it was how they got by. Looking for something? Ask a rat; they'd get it for you. Worried about pickpockets? Ask a rat; they'd put the word out you weren't to be touched. Need a problem dealt with? Ask a rat. They were resourceful, they could go almost anywhere, and if you took care of them they'd take care of you.

Sennek nodded towards the rat, who was now excitedly talking with a few of his fellows near the main duct access. "What was that about?" he asked in a low, wary tone. Penny shrugged, smiled, and patted him on the back.

"Tell ya later, big guy."

Whoever the nosy idiots by the lift were, they had no idea what they were in for.


	9. Chapter 08

**Chapter 8**

 **The Present—February 13** **th** **, 2945—Spider, Cathcart.**

Whatever else Crossways might have been, it was always full of life in its most elementary form. In between the shady dealings, the occasional bouts of violence, and beneath the cacophony of heavy machinery, there was a whole civilization in microcosm bumbling its way through day by day. The two former carriers' subdecks were a labyrinth of living quarters, commissaries, rec pods, and hydroponics bays, with the concession of a single massive shaft tunneled out amidships from hangar deck to hangar deck—a grand avenue between port and market.

Because the passage was not original to either ship's design, there was little order or sense to the flow of traffic; in the fifteen meter wide shaft, there were interconnected walkways running up and down the sides where the builders of the 'station' had kludged together some old grav plates to permit normal movement. Other outlaw ports built in similar fashion had all manner of contrivances for dealing with different gravitational planes, ranging from lifts that inverted halfway down their shafts to zero-gee access tubes and even cable slings... Crossways had a simple set of curved ramps at either end of the shaft which allowed one to walk normally from the deck of one ship, into the shaft, and then out on the other side. It was an elegant solution.

It was also disconcerting as hell. Gravity got weird in the space where plates met at angles; if you weren't ready for it, the nausea could be overwhelming. Then there was the small matter of standing on the edge of a fifteen meter wide, sixty meter deep _pit_... and then walking right over the edge. Penny was no stranger to Crossways, and she tried to play it straight, but couldn't hide a grimace as she stepped over the threshold. Novel though the design was, she much preferred her gravity to only pull in _one_ direction at a time, and it took real work to keep lunch heading through her guts the way it was _supposed_ to.

Sennek, to his credit, didn't even flinch. Maybe it was some quirk of his alien physiology, or just a determination to not look weak in front of the human. He followed along silently, but Penny noticed that his hand never left the knife she'd given him. Tough guy or no, he'd never been in a place like _this_ before. Too bad he was focusing on all the wrong things.

Penny's dealings with the station rats made them more or less safe from pickpockets and their ilk, but there were still plenty of people who'd take advantage given half a chance to—visitors from off-station, or thugs who were looking to gain a little cred by picking a fight with the biggest, baddest thing they could find. Sennek didn't even notice the half dozen or so menacing figures step out of the shadows towards him... only to back off again when they saw who he was _with_.

In a world where reputation was something more than words, Penny had the ink to back up her swagger. Everything she'd ever been, everything she'd ever done, everyone she'd ever killed—it was all written on her skin for anyone to see, if they knew what they were looking for. If they didn't? There were many _cruel_ outlaws in the 'Verse, and many who were greedy or arrogant... but the _stupid_ ones never lasted long. If they didn't get scooped up by the Advocacy, they invariably got consumed by their own kind for crossing someone they shouldn't have.

When they reached the bazaar, rather than heading directly to Taz' dock, Penny took Sennek shopping. She had nothing worthwhile to trade, and no money to speak of, but there was still plenty to see and do within the cavernous marketplace... and anyone following them would have a very difficult time staying hidden long enough to find out where they were ultimately going. Reputation cut two ways: there were plenty of lesser scumbags who'd steer clear, but there were also a few who'd recognize not just a set of tattoos, but the _identity_ of the woman wearing them. Penny and Matt had burned far, far too many bridges when they went legit, and there were bound to be a few people with scores to settle even if they _didn't_ know about the price on her head.

Sennek, nervous in this den of thieves but blissfully unaware of those deeper dangers, stuck to Penny's heels like an overgrown puppy. From time to time, he glanced around, as though his untrained eyes could have spotted a threat even if there was one. In a way, Penny understood—for the first year she'd spent working for Uncle David, she'd felt the same way every single time an Advocacy ship popped up on her sensors. Every trip into Quasi became a run through the Gauntlet as she ducked around cameras and cops that she had no real reason to fear. She'd actually drawn more suspicion on herself acting that way... just like Sennek was doing right now.

Only when she was well satisfied that nobody was following did Penny elbow her way out of the crowd and head for the upper decks. As old as the former carrier was, none of its lifts worked... but their shafts remained, empty, and as with the central inter-ship access a trick of gravity allowed them to still be useful. In this case, it was the complete absence thereof—there was a dead zone about three meters out from the shaft Penny selected where the plates had been either disabled or removed. A crude arrow painted on the wall pointed up—but, as with any attempt at imposing order in the Spider, it was ignored constantly: just as the mismatched pair were about to swing into the shaft and kick off, a large crate came tumbling past the other way, followed closely by a pair of suited handlers.

Penny shook her head and motioned Sennek inside. "C'mon, buddy—before traffic picks up. Unless you wanna climb up ten more decks' worth of ladders." Sennek said nothing, but shook his head slowly as he launched himself up the empty shaft. They only made it seven decks before a blockage caused by competing travelers forced them to exit, but three ladders was a far more tolerable climb.

Activity dropped off sharply towards the top of the old bridge tower—Crossways' command and control was handled from the other hull, so most of this space had been turned into offices and, for a few enterprising and wealthy souls, penthouse apartments... but the actual bridge deck remained unclaimed, likely by design. While its systems were dark, the breakers and relays showed power; the facility could be reactivated on a moment's notice if something happened to the main bridge. There was no one standing watch, however, condemning the expansive CIC to an eerie silence.

Taz' ship was docked to the old flag airlock, aft of the superstructure. The docking gallery, large enough for the old carrier's entire command staff to stand for inspection, afforded an excellent view of the Merchantman that served as his home, office, and studio. The thing was ancient, by human standards—likely dating back before the Tevarin wars, it had belonged to Taz and his ancestors as far back as they could trace their lineage. The hull was painted a vivid blue and adorned with symbols representing all of the stars whose light she'd bathed in over the centuries, with the heraldry of Taz' house given pride of place on the vessel's prow.

Penny made to punch up the intercom, but drew her hand back and smiled as the gallery lights came up full and the airlock's inner hatch whirred open. _As if anyone could drop in on him unannounced,_ she thought. If she knew Taz, he had his tendrils running all throughout Crossways. In all likelihood, he'd pegged the _Chance_ on approach to the port. It was nice to feel welcome sometimes.

"Well," she said, motioning Sennek into the airlock. "It seems we're expected."

"Indeed."

"Listen, Sen—play it cool, alright? Taz can be a little... intense."

The Merchantman's inner door irised open. Their host, a Banu of roughly average height for his kind and festooned in gaudy silks, threw his arms wide in welcome and promptly exploded into his own special broken version of human conversation as he ushered them into his ship.

"Nels! Good see you not good you here but good see you! Too long been too long you gone how you have been look _good!_ " He clapped his hands on Penny's shoulders, twisted her this way and that, and examined every inch of her while she tried not to burst out laughing.

"All the same, man, all the same. Couldn't stay away forever, y'know?"

"But you know I tell him you here!" Taz meant her father—which was confirmation enough that they were still on speaking terms, in spite of the distance. _So much the better. I can probably ask him to just call direct instead of screwing around with message drops._

"That's the idea, right? I need to... see him about something. Business."

"Not like Hess no? Not help with that you and Dad best of my work you two I not help you with that."

"I wouldn't ask you to. I'm not looking to settle with him—not that way. He's got something I need."

Taz nodded quickly, an undulating, bobbing motion that no human neck could have matched—then he finally acknowledged Sennek, even though Penny knew he'd been aware of the big guy all along. He turned to the much larger being, puffed himself up to his full height, and began rapidly poking him in the chest.

"Nels who this? Who are what you want here? Tell fast or I add head to collection!"

That, naturally, was when Sennek _noticed_ the collection. It filled the entire docking lounge of Taz' ship, from the deckplates to the overhead around all four bulkheads—a grisly array of lovingly preserved and polished finger bones, excised patches of skin bearing tattoos 'reclaimed' from their former owners, and a truly impressive number of skulls. There were twenty-seven humans, five Tevarin, three Banu, a Xi'An, and a Vanduul. The Xi'An and one of the humans were new since the last time Penny had been aboard, but apart from them she knew exactly how each and every one of the others had come to be mounted on Taz' wall.

Penny had never seen a Tevarin look ill before. She was torn between laughing and offering some kind of reassurance, but somehow she didn't think " _hey, it's okay, they all deserved it"_ would be terribly comforting, so instead she caught Taz' eye and waved him off.

"Relax, Taz, he's with me. Bit of a long story."

The energetic alien bobbed his head in acceptance and bustled over to his desk. On a 'normal' day, he would have one of his several loyal retainers stationed there to greet any visitors—and ensure that they saw the _entire_ gallery before they met the boss—but it seemed that Taz himself was the only one on the main deck. That spoke volumes about his trust in Penny, especially when she'd brought a stranger into his home.

"Story I must hear sometime," he said, rifling through a stack of old-fashioned ink-and-paper sketches. "Where Matt? Have something for both you love need get my kit. You kill Grinder everybody know it! Come here I must paint this for you tell Matt I paint him too."

Penny's stomach tried to leap up her throat. It somehow had never occurred to her that Taz didn't _know_. He was so well connected in so many places, she'd never entertained the notion that Taz didn't know _everything_. She found a chair and flopped into it, stunned. _What do I even say?_ Taz and Matt went back ages. Hell, Matt had _introduced_ her to Taz! The alien inker considered Dorian Hess a mortal enemy; he'd been only too happy to put his mark on the kid who took him out... that had been the first transaction in a partnership with the newly-renamed Clairmont Syndicate which was evidently still going strong. Penny shook her head, slowly. _All that history, and he didn't know._

"That face I not like when see that face. Nels tell me tell me what happen."

"Taz, I... Matt... he's gone, man." She lost her voice for a moment, and it was barely a whisper when she found it again. "It was the fucking Vanduul, Taz. They killed him."

Inevitably, conversation led from Matt's death to Sennek dropping into Penny's life, her decision to join Operation Pitchfork, and ultimately what she needed from her father to make it happen. Taz fell into that odd mood he always did when he was analyzing new data—he was no stranger to the whole Pitchfork subculture, although he was not involved with it himself. On that much, Taz and Matt shared a lot: survival, and if possible comfort, were their highest priorities. _Well,_ Penny thought with a little mental shake, _not quite the highest—right, Matt? Sorry you didn't make it to fat, old, and grinning... but that's the point of all this, isn't it?_

Taz clucked at the suggestion that Penny's father would part with any of his _ships_ , but that wasn't his business—he only had to set up a meeting; what father and daughter discussed was up to them. In any case, the number of hulls had shrunk considerably; when last she spoke to her father, he was in possession of three spaceworthy but stripped-down Vanguards, a Starfarer Gemini, and a milspec Retaliator—none of which he could use, as they'd been captured from a Navy deep space patrol and the UEE was still searching for them.

"Fighters refitted," Taz explained. "Tanker sold for parts good money good hardware milspec no damage. Bomber still no good maybe he make deal. No use for big bomber too loud not quick like other ships but said he might turn into command ship think that not happen already got one now."

"Damn." It had probably been far too much to hope that Quentin Clairmont would have sat on that many ships for so long without finding a way to turn a profit with them. "See what you can do—just this once? I just want him to hear me out."

"So you _really_ go really go? You know what he want."

 _Yeah_ , Penny thought, _I know._ That was another thing she wasn't going to let Sennek in on—not yet. Hopefully not ever, unless it came down to that. She was pretty sure she could find a way around paying a blood price, but her father was definitely going to demand something _big_ for an apology before he'd even talk with her. There was no better way, though; she needed that bomber. She didn't have the money to sink into buying the bare hull legit then retrofitting it and arming it, let alone the total impossibility of someone like _her_ getting the permits for the weapons themselves. She needed a fully intact, operational fighting ship, and she needed to pay for it with something other than cash.

"I guess I do," she said at last. "Been running away long enough, Taz. It's time to settle it. Maybe we both walk out." She hoped they would, anyway—she wasn't entirely sure what would happen if the meeting ended in violence. Without any way to gauge her father's current disposition towards her... Plan B, as it stood, was to run away really fast and probably throw more grenades. Maybe frags this time.

Business concluded, Taz changed subjects so abruptly it took Penny a moment to catch up. "Okay no more that. Still need to paint! Come with me give you nice art for Grinder." His expression sobered and he laid a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe something else too."

"I was thinking the same, man," she said when she'd collected herself. "Already got something for it, y'know? Not your usual stuff, but... think you can make an exception?" She pulled up the image on her MobiGlas and set it to project onto the one blank piece of sketch paper lying on Taz' desk. He looked at it, glanced back at Penny to see if she was serious, then back at the page—and dissolved into a fit of laughter. It was a flaming death's head.

"He not like that at all! Nels you always know him best he laugh his dumb hat off at that! We put it... here!" He tapped a spot right between Penny's shoulder blades. It was a good pick—somewhere that nobody would see unless she wanted them to. Once, long ago, she'd broached the subject of death with Matt, and told him that she'd get inked to remember him after he was gone. He'd flatly rejected the sentimentality of the notion, so the design got more and more cliche and further over the top the longer they talked—the better to get under his skin.

 _Joke's still on you, asshole. I wouldn't have it done if you hadn't gone and fucking died on me._

* * *

Several hours later, Penny walked out of Taz' studio with a pair of bandages covering fresh ink: a death's head on her back that Matt would have hated, but found hilarious, and a caricature on her left forearm of the Grim Reaper using his scythe to cut the command pod off a Drake Caterpillar. Penny thought it was one of Taz' best ideas ever—and squikking Grinder _had_ been really satisfying. _Couldn't have happened to a nicer sonofabitch._ She smiled when she imagined Dad's likely reaction to seeing that one—Grinder had been one of his top hitters, and the _Wendigo_ had been one of his favorite ships. _Guess I'll see the face he makes soon enough._

Sennek was still standing right where Penny left him, sweeping his head slowly one way, then the other, making eye contact with every skull along the way as though their long-dead owners would spring from the void to attack him... but his eyes kept coming back to that lone Vanduul skull, and every time they did there was a flash of well-tempered rage. As calm as the big guy's demeanor was, there was a hunger inside him waiting to be set loose.

 _This is really happening, isn't it? We're gonna hit those bastards._ This was the first step—real progress. More than just words spoken over a few drinks in some bar. For the first time, Penny felt _committed_ to the wild cause she'd pledged herself to, and seeing the way her new partner glared at that Vanduul skull just drove it home. Now it was time to get back in motion—time to take the next step, and the next. Keep on moving 'til the job was done.

"Well Taz, been fun. Tell Dad if he tries anything I'll throw a _real_ grenade at him this time."

Taz laughed and slapped her heartily on the back. "You always have belly full of guts Nels! Hope you keep them inside don't want to put your ink on Dad's arm do I?"

Penny smiled back, more or less sincerely. "I'll try not to make you do that."

"I put word you not there for fight—all I can do."

"Couldn't ask more, man. Stay breathing, hey?"

"You same Nels you same."

* * *

"Why does he speak that way?" asked Sennek, barely twenty seconds outside the airlock from Taz' ship as they walked back through the old carrier's bridge. _And thank the bloody stars he held his fucking tongue in there!_ The crafty Banu was probably still listening, but this way he'd just get a chuckle out of that; face to face it would have been an insult. Taz didn't kill for insults like some people on the underside of the 'Verse, but it was _never_ wise to upset a man who could ruin your life with a single word in the right ear.

"He's _got_ a translator," Penny said with a shrug, "if that's what you're asking. I think he just likes the way human words sound when he says them. You don't exactly talk normal yourself, y'know."

"I speak very well, Penny."

"Yeah, I guess you do. Could learn to mix it up a little. Toss some contractions in there, little spice..." Sennek sounded like a textbook in a grammar school class. Always proper, always precise. It was... actually sort of annoying.

"I prefer to be clearly understood." He showed Penny his devil's grin. " _I. Don't. Do. Fuckin'. Vernacular. It. Ain't. What's. Comin'. Outta. My. Mouth. I. Can't. Stand. It._ " It was as though he'd thrown a sentence into a blender and turned it to 'puree.' The man wasn't kidding—that sounded awful beyond any _possible_ description. If it was possible for a _language_ to scream in unholy agony, then it surely just had.

" _Eegh._ Forget it. Talk how you want. Maybe never use contractions again. Ever." _Then maybe I'll find whatever prick taught him to speak the language and wring the life out of his sorry ass._ Tevarin on the whole, Penny found, tended to be meticulous about whatever they did, but most of them just didn't talk unless they had something very important to say. Sennek, on the other hand... the big guy almost never shut up.

"I thought I might find you here." _That_ was most definitely not Sennek talking. It took a second for the name behind the voice to register, and a second longer to figure out where it was coming from, and then her head whipped towards a shadow that was just a _little_ longer than it should have been.

 _Shit._ That was not a voice Penny had ever wanted to hear again, especially not in a place like this. _Maybe_ when she was on the safe end of a plasma caster sighting down on the smug bastard, but _definitely_ not like this! Reflexes took over; she found the nearest hard cover and planted herself behind it, swinging her shotgun up to ready even as her ass hit the deck.

Zan Vargas stepped out of the shadow—then crossfire lit up the whole compartment.

 _Fuck me! We walked right into it!_ No armor, no shields... but _grenades_ were another matter entirely. Penny instantly regretted grabbing flashbangs instead of frags, but snapped one off all the same, arcing it over towards where she thought most of the shit was coming from—then plugged an ear with her free hand and squeezed her eyes shut tight. The concussion hurt plenty—something warm and wet dripping down her left ear told her it was ruptured, but that was way easier to fix than bullet and laser holes.

Penny took a quick glance back to see where Sennek was, and to her great relief saw him hiding behind a nearby console. She popped out and hammered off a few rounds unaimed, but there were just too damn many of the fuckers to put down like that! Especially since... _oh you have_ got _to be shitting me!_ Sennek was nearby alright... nearby and clutching his _knife._

"Sennek, you shithead, _fucking shoot them!_ " She didn't know if he could even hear, so she demonstrated the technique, hoping the big idiot would get the picture but utterly devoid of hope that he'd be providing any meaningful cover fire.

"You should have brought some _real_ backup, girl!"

" _Suck shit, Vargas!_ "

"Come out and I'll make it quick!"

Penny answered with her shotgun, and was rewarded with a scream and a curse. Not Vargas, but a hit was a hit. Lucky the flashbang had broken up their coordination, though sadly the _leader_ of this merry band of assholes was clearly unaffected. He was also clearly _not_ trying to take her alive.

 _What the fuck? Either Dad's changed his mind, or..._

"Bossman know you're here, asshole?"

"What do you think?"

 _Shit._ That was a no. That meant he was here for blood, not to collect a bounty. That cut a few options off the menu. Giving up would have weakened her negotiating position with Dad, but word would have gotten back from Taz before anything _really_ bad could happen and then the meeting would have just been moved up a bit. But Vargas wasn't here for that. The only possible explanation was that he was getting ready to split with the Syndicate and figured it was time to settle up on an old debt... and the bastard was _just_ arrogant enough to think he'd get away with it.

Laser fire raked the projector table she was hiding behind, as though just to make the point. Penny sent a few more flechette rounds back the other way and just barely ducked return fire from somebody's slugthrower.

"I'm going to make you sorry, bitch, for _every time_ you humiliated me! You can't hide behind your old man anymore!"

"Well shit, look who finally grew a pair! _Con_ -grats, man, that's great for you!"

Penny knew she couldn't stay where she was much longer. There were enough of the bastards that sooner or later one of them was bound to grow a brain and flank, and she did _not_ trust Sennek to be on the lookout for that. He'd clearly never been in a real fight like this before—though, to his very small credit, he was at least firing his bloody weapon now.

 _Just one left,_ Penny thought, yanking the pin off her second and last flashbang with her teeth. She waited until she thought a few of them must be reloading, then hurled it across the bridge and took a flying leap towards the starboard bulkhead. The landing was less than graceful, but if anyone saw it to laugh at it, either they would be dead in a minute or _she_ would, so her dignity could take the hit. Sennek, the damned idiot, had stayed right where he was, but his tactical ineptitude was not high on the list of priorities right now.

Penny leaned out with the shotgun—incredibly, the bad guys were still shooting at her _old_ position, so the flashbang must have done its job in hiding her movement. She finally got a look at them: there were five in total, including Vargas and one who was nursing a wounded arm, and they looked like a bunch of thugs he'd just grabbed and tossed some money to on the promise of an easy kill. _So much the better._ Penny took careful aim and blasted one in the knees, dropping him in a screaming heap and causing the rest to flail around wildly looking for the source of the shot.

The shotgun was almost dry. Not wanting to waste the last few shells and hoping to play the opposition for suckers, Penny switched to her holdout pistol and peppered their position with a few quick laser bursts. There were a few curses, then a sharp laugh and the sound of boots on steel—but Penny was already bringing her street sweeper back up as they rounded the corner. A quick burst laid two out dead with great ragged holes in their bodies, and suddenly the odds were even.

"You should have brought better backup, Vargas!" she yelled, parroting the smug shit's words right back at him. _Her_ backup might barely know which end of the gun went boom, but at least he had enough of a brain to stay in cover! Vargas swore a streak up and down four different languages and raked the room with automatic fire.

Sennek's voice cut through the ozone-tinged air: "Penny! Watch out!" _Now he chimes in?!_ Something clanked and rolled beside her. _Ohshit!_ She was tumbling over the comm station in half a heartbeat, landing headfirst on the chair and crashing to the deck just as Vargas' grenade went off. Unlike hers, this one _was_ a frag; a sharp sting in her calf told her that some shrapnel had found a meaty home.

Head ringing like the gong at a street fair, Penny scrambled clumsily to find a new place to hide, but came upright and found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. The fourth thug, the one she'd only winged, stood over her with his slugthrower, grinning.

Her brain refused to comprehend what happened next. A massive, thundering blast—then everything was _red._ Her eyes stung. She rubbed them; they were covered in blood. Not her blood. That was good. What was left of the thug's upper body slumped over and hit the deck with a meaty _plop_.

"Nels! I sorry I make mess all over had no choice would have shot you!"

"Taz—what? _What?!_ " She wasn't sure if she was more surprised at the sudden rescue—or that she could still hear on at least one side after the grenade and... whatever _that_ was.

There Taz stood, next to an awestruck Sennek, wielding the biggest damned gun Penny had ever _seen_. She looked at Taz, then the gun, then the remains of the thug, the _massive_ puddle of blood and chunks of meat, then the bulkhead behind him... of which a meter-wide patch had been scorched black. _Oh. Okay. That makes sense, I guess._ It was definitely better than the other thing that could have happened. She swiped an arm across her face to get rid of some of the gore and only succeeded in smearing it around.

"Uh... yeah. Vargas?"

"He ran away," offered Sennek helpfully, pointing towards the companionway.

"Ah." _Figures. Tossed a grenade and took off._ "Um, Taz?"

"Yes Nels are you hurt what you need?"

"A shower would be nice."


	10. Chapter 09

**Chapter 9**

 **The Present—February 13** **th** **, 2945—Spider, Cathcart**

The wound in Penny's leg, despite feeling like it was on fire, wasn't much deeper than the skin. She'd been lucky—the shrapnel that had hit her must have ricocheted off something else first, or it would have done some serious damage. As it was, she'd probably be limping for a week or so and wind up with another cool scar. _And another reason to kill that asshole Vargas,_ she thought with a grimace. Not that she had needed one... but her father would probably get to him first, once Taz related the story. Bastard Quentin Clairmont might be, but he'd been _very_ specific about the live capture part of the bounty on Penny's head and she knew exactly how well the man took betrayal.

What bothered Penny most was her _ear_. She hated being deaf on one side, and while fixing that was a quick trip to the doctor back on Terra, she was still on _Crossways_ and had already been ambushed once on this trip. She kept having to turn her head around to hear what Taz was babbling about, which wouldn't have been such an annoyance except that he was babbling about where to put three more tattoos for the thugs she'd pasted in the fight with Vargas.

"-there still space on arm with other art! Give me hour or two draw up good ink to paint there you love it tie whole piece together!"

"Taz, man, _no!_ I don't even know who those assholes _were_. I don't want them there! Gimme a couple more teeth to put with the rest and call it a day."

The Banu threw his arms up in frustration, which nearly yanked out the stitches he was in the process of tying the hole in her thigh together with. The first sound that came out of Penny's mouth in reply was not so much an expletive as a little piece of pissed-off supernova—she heaved her boot at Taz' head; he ducked it, and when he came back up her fist was waiting for his nose. He spent the next few moments rubbing his face, and Penny took the opportunity to finish sewing up her leg.

"Humans complain too much no appreciation for good art" Taz said to no one in particular.

" _Fucking. Ow._ " Penny growled in reply. She tied off the suture, snipped it, and tossed the tools back onto the tray. She made to stand up—then, thinking better of it, took a _deep_ gulp of the whiskey her host had provided in lieu of anaesthetic and leaned way, way back in the chair instead. "Just gimme some teeth, man. I just want some teeth."

Taz _hrmphed_ , but finally nodded in agreement and scurried off to get his kit. Penny heard a sound somewhere behind her one good ear and whipped her head around to shoot Sennek a death glare. The massive Tevarin grunted, shrugged, and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Not a _word_ outta you, jackass." She pointed at her leg, which thanks to Taz' less-than-spectacular bedside manner was _still_ oozing blood. "This? _Your_ fault. Yeah, you. Walks into a gunfight and pulls out his fucking _knife._ Un _damn_ believable."

"I have never had to do that before," he said, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. Penny stared at him and just let her jaw fall open. She only spoke up when, after a _long_ wait, it became perfectly clear he wasn't going to offer anything else.

"What the hell d'you mean? You were in a _space battle_ , douchebag! Your _ship_ blew up—remember? That's kinda what _started_ all this shit, innit?"

"It is not the same."

"Man, not two hours ago I walked out into the gallery and you were looking at that 'Duul skull like you wanted to make bone powder with your fists. What _is_ it with you, anyway? I hand you weapons, you try to refuse them... then your hand never leaves that friggin' knife for a second until I have to _tell_ you it's time to grab the gun! You hold _that_ like you've handled them before, but you shoot like you've never even _seen_ one. It's like you were _trying_ to miss!"

"I was."

"Say. _What?_ "

"I did not want to kill those men."

"Sennek, _those men_ were trying to _kill_ us. You _do_ realize that, don't you? If I hadn't been there—hell, if _Taz_ hadn't show up—you'd be sucking your last breath through a _laser hole_. Do you even... I mean, _fuck!_ Just... _fuck._ "

She turned back around and fumed. This had to be the bottom. There was _nothing_ that could make this day any worse. All that vengeance talk was just a pile of steaming shit, and here was the 'Verse's biggest, toughest-looking alien... with the intestinal fortitude of a _rabbit_.

"Aren't you a Citizen or something?" she asked over her shoulder— "Don't you have to join the military for that anyhow? Did they just not teach you how to shoot or something?"

"I was in logistics," Sennek answered with a slight edge of frustration creeping into his voice. "I never had to kill anyone."

"You're gonna have to learn if you want to fight Vanduul, Sen."

"I suppose _you_ will teach me, then. You seem to be good at it."

 _That_ stopped Penny's tongue dead. Her jaw clicked shut. He wasn't wrong. Just from listening to her and Taz, he had to have figured out what her blood ink meant. There were the more intricate pieces on her left shoulder and bicep, but she had _just_ been arguing with Taz about the shark's teeth around her collarbone, and she'd never told anyone outside the life what those were for. The art on her arm, sure, but never the teeth. One for every time she'd killed someone without even knowing their name. The feel of this place had come back to her so quickly and so naturally that she'd forgotten Sennek was even in the room.

"Yeah," she half-whispered, half-spat. "I'm a regular fucking psycho." But her new partner wasn't done yet. Emboldened by the tone of her reaction, he pressed the attack.

"You _enjoyed_ that gunfight, Penny. You were _smiling_ when you shot those men. Now you are here, and you want to get tattoos to remember killing them. You are _proud_ of it."

 _He did not just go there._

"You're a fucking hypocrite. Remind me again—who got who into the revenge business?"

" _Whom._ And you are bloodthirsty. I seek revenge for my crew because it is a thing I _must_ do, not because it is a thing I _want_ to do."

"You think I _wanted_ to kill those guys? We got _ambushed_ , Sennek! I didn't _plan_ this shit!"

The alien's face twisted up as though in thought. Then: "I do not think you were looking for a fight," he said. "But I think you were happy that one _found_ you."

She heaved her other boot at Sennek's face. He needed to stop poking this. He had to stop. _Damn it, I did want a fight. I've been wanting a fight every day since I left this shit behind. I hate running all the time. I hate being afraid. So yeah, I'm happy when I can't avoid it. The only way I can make them stop chasing me is to kill a few and make_ them _be afraid for a while._ She didn't say anything. Not about the bounty, not about her history with Vargas, or Grinder, or any of the other shitheads who'd taken a shot at her since she burned her bridges with the Syndicate. _Definitely_ not about how terrified she was of having to look her father in the eye after all this time, and of what body part he'd want her to cut off herself _this_ time. That was how she knew she could face the Vanduul: the things chasing her from inside her own shadow were worse.

"You asked what I did before?" Penny asked, after a silence that spoke volumes more than words ever could have. She gestured around her, with particular attention towards the docking gallery where Taz' skull collection lived. " _This_ is what I did before. This is where I came from, Sennek. _This_ life. _This_ world. So yeah, I've killed people. I can't even tell you they all _deserved_ it." She'd meant for that to come out hard and tough, but it sounded more like _disgust_... and it wasn't aimed at Sennek. "You wanna go back to your world, now's the time. You stay on with me, man, and sooner or later..." she gestured at the ring of shark's teeth around her collarbone. "There's always gonna be someone with a score."

The burning in her leg had dulled somewhat, to drink or distraction, so Penny got on her feet and started pacing—or, at least, limping—back and forth across Taz' studio until it was throbbing again. She stopped at the washup counter and splashed some water on her face. It didn't help. Nothing ever really did.

"Wanna know something stupid, Sennek?" She didn't wait for an answer. "I said yes to you because I wanted it to be _me_ chasing someone for a change." She'd have gotten over Matt, eventually. Oh, she'd have fragged every last Vanduul bastard that ever flew through her sights, but she wouldn't have gone _this_ far to do it. She'd hauled around a full one-eighty turn and flown straight back towards everything she'd been trying for half a decade to leave behind. "I'm so fucking tired of running away."

A giant alien hand came gently down to rest on Penny's shoulder—and she was glad that her face was already wet; Sennek did not say anything, if he noticed at all. She brushed his hand away and shook her head. This was not the time or the place for that shit. Not in this world. In this world, when you spilled blood, you got marked for it. If the ink was still fresh when she met with her father, it might even help. Show him that she hadn't gone soft.

 _Have I, though?_ Sometimes it felt like it. She felt like a wild beast in a cage, locked up with all the cattle while her own kind circled in for the slaughter. She knew that sooner or later, they might come after her for real—hit her where she was weak—and that if they did, the only way she'd ever stop them was to be just as ruthless and just as brutal.

 _Can I even do that anymore?_ The answer wasn't so clear. In the old days, if someone crossed her, she'd have followed them to the edge of the 'Verse if that's what it took to get even. Penny _had_ done that, once. The proof was written on her skin... but that was more than a decade and a lifetime ago. Here, now? She hadn't even thought about pursuing Vargas after he fled. The first thought on her mind was getting back underway, making the rendezvous with the two OTS pilots in Davien she was supposed to ferry back home to Terra. And when she got there...

"Sennek."

"What is it?"

"You can't tell anyone about this. Not any of it. Not where we've been, not what happened here. Do you... do you understand?" The rest of the family thought that her past was just that. If Frank or Tess—or, worst of all, David—were to find out that she'd been lying to them? Not only could she kiss her job with OTS goodbye, but it wasn't much of a stretch to worry that they'd report her to the Advocacy. Penny looked Sennek straight in the eye to be absolutely sure of his answer.

"I... yes. I do."

The big guy would probably come around, sooner or later. He knew _why_ she was doing all this, at any rate. Her uncles, and her aunt? Penny wasn't even sure if they knew about this whole Pitchfork business at all, let alone why she needed to dredge up her old life to carry it off. They _certainly_ wouldn't be on board with whatever she'd have to do to earn back enough of her father's trust to do business with him. Let them stay in the dark for now. _One problem at a time._

* * *

 **The Past—July 31** **st** **, 2929—Ninevah Station,** _ **Hess**_ **Syndicate headquarters.**

The man on the other side of the glass looked angry. He was yelling something, but Penny couldn't hear what it was. She turned around and looked up at her father, who was leaning against the bulkhead with his arms folded. He smiled down at her.

"Happy birthday, Nellie."

She scrunched her face up, confused. What did that have to do with the angry man? She brushed her hair out of her face and folded her arms, mimicking her father. That brought a faint chuckle to his lips, and he stooped over to put his arm around her shoulder.

"Ten is a big number, Nellie. I thought about it, and I decided to get you a big present to celebrate."

 _That_ she definitely understood! Dad always got her the _best_ presents. Last year he'd gotten her a really cool knife, and she carried it everywhere with her. If her present was better than that, then it was gonna be _awesome_ being ten!

"Would you like your present now, or later?"

"Now! I want it now!" She was practically jumping up and down in anticipation! He never made this big a deal out of it, so this present had to be something really, really special. He stood up and beckoned her over to the control panel.

"See this?" he asked. Penny nodded. "This is part of my job," her father explained. He turned back around and leaned over to look Penny in the eye. "Would you like to do your Dad's job for him—just for today?" She nodded enthusiastically. Of course she did! Her dad was awesome. He worked for a really powerful, really scary guy called Dorian, and his job was to make sure nobody messed with their Syndicate.

Penny's father stepped out of the way and ushered her up to the console. He pointed through the window at the angry man, who was pounding on the glass with his fists. "He stole from the Syndicate, Nellie. My job— _our_ job—is to make sure he never does that again." Oh— _now_ she understood! She was going to make that guy stop being angry and start being scared! That's what her father did; she'd gone with him a few times when he visited people who did something that hurt the Syndicate.

"Dad, this is _so_ cool! Show me how!"

Her father smiled his thin little smile and gestured at a large pulsing blue button on the console. "Just press that," he said, "and he'll _never_ be a problem again." Penny's eyes lit up. _Just_ that? It was so easy anyone could do it! She'd show Dad that she could handle being a grown-up. She puffed herself up to her full height, reached across the console, and mashed her thumb down on the button.

Flashing yellow lights came on in the room with the angry man. He stopped pounding on the glass, and suddenly looked way more afraid than angry. He fell to his knees and reached his hands out, like he was begging. It was working! She was really doing her father's job!

Suddenly, a door to the man's left opened up, and he got sucked out through it. There was black on the other side. _Space!_ That wasn't good. She knew people weren't supposed to be in space. Not without spacesuits. She felt her cheeks get warm as she turned around again. Dad was gonna be so mad.

"I'm sorry! I did it wrong!"

To Penny's surprise, though, her father wasn't angry. He was smiling. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed—then wrapped her up in a great big hug.

"No, Nellie. You didn't do anything wrong. You did it just the right way."

"Okay then. I thought I was just s'posed to scare him."

 _That_ made the whole room erupt in laughter. One of her Dad's friends patted her roughly on the head. "I'll say ya did, at that! Scared the air right outta his lungs, ya did!"

Penny was still confused. Everyone was... _happy?_ That meant she did good. She did her father's job, and she didn't mess it up! But... if she did it right, and Dad was proud, why didn't it _feel_ good? Maybe it was a grown-up thing. Her dad didn't always smile when he was doing his job—that was probably it. Grown-ups weren't always supposed to be happy.

 _I like my knife better_ , she thought. It was a _way_ better present. She still had it to wear around on her belt and cut things with. What she did with the button was already over. She didn't tell her father that; he'd probably be upset that she didn't like her present. Instead she wiggled out of Dad's embrace and tugged at her sleeve with a big grin pasted on her face like she was having the time of her life.

"We gotta have cake, Dad! You promised we'd have cake this time!"

Her father nodded, his own smile widening. Whatever it was Penny was supposed to have done, she must have done it right after all. She didn't get to see Dad smile much—that was much better than a present anyway. Besides... cake! _Nobody_ could be unhappy while they were eating cake. The guy who'd ended up in space wouldn't be happy, because he wouldn't get any cake ever again, but that was his fault... right? He shouldn't have stolen from the Boss! Everybody knew it was bad to make the Boss mad. _That means it's okay he's in space now, right?_

So why did it still not feel good?

* * *

 **The Present—February 13** **th** **, 2945—Spider, Cathcart**

Rather than risk a second ambush, Taz brought Penny and Sennek directly back to the docking bays in his own ship. It had to have been the first time the ancient starship had moved in months, if not years, but Taz was as obsessive about maintenance as he was about everything else—the Merchantman maneuvered as smoothly as any vessel fresh off a dealer's lot, and the expert hands of her pilot guided them around the misshapen bulk of Crossways with a dramatic flourish: as they coasted around the outer hull, they spun on axis to fill the observation deck windows with a panoramic view of the Spider... or, at least, part of it.

Penny disembarked with a smile and a wave. While the brief throwdown with Sennek had soured her high from the fight, it was impossible to stay upset for long while conversing with _Taz_ , and the rogue Banu talked her one good ear right off the side of her head on the short, but slow trip around the outside of Crossways. She offered payment for his services... she knew he wouldn't accept it, and she had nothing to give him in any case, but as he was in the end a businessman it would have been wrong not to at least make the gesture. Taz insisted that she already _had_ given him something of value, though: it was unlikely that Quentin Clairmont knew about Vargas' betrayal, so Taz had some information to trade... and perhaps to use as leverage when he contacted the crime lord to arrange a meeting with his estranged progeny. The offering would strengthen Taz' position of neutrality, while also reaffirming his value to the Syndicate.

Penny was whistling a little tune she couldn't recall the name of by the time she and Sennek made it back to the hangar where she'd docked the _Fool's Chance._ All things considered, the trip could have gone worse. Sure, she was covered in bandages, but _less_ than half of them were covering fresh wounds, and the rest were just to keep her new ink safe until it had set in.

The access hatch creaked open, and Penny heard the familiar broken slang of station rats conversing within. One in particular stood out when she stepped through the portal—he was a little taller than the others, and was wearing a patchy robe fancied up with gold paint and bits of sparkly metal. He turned around to greet his latest visitors, and broke into a familiar smile when he caught sight of Penny.

"Holy shit," she said, incredulous. "Fetter, man, is that you?" He was older than she remembered, and _way_ taller, but that was definitely the same cowlick-wearing melon-headed kid she used to deal with when she came here to the Crossways markets to do business for her father. On being recognized, he fluffed out the patchy, gaudy robe he was wearing, stick his snout up in the air, and leveled a grubby finger at Penny.

" _King_ Fetter t'you, bigs! Been busy last while an' so. Got fixed all proper, see? All rats listen whasit _I_ say now!"

"Right on, man! Congrats—you always did know best 'round here." She grinned at the scrawny little King and cocked her head a little to the left so she could hear better.

"Heard you came back," said the Rat King. "Wanted to see whasit. Lotta bigs sayin' you run scaredy."

Of course the 'bigs' said that. Leave it to pirates to not grasp the distinction between 'scared' and 'disgusted,' but she'd gotten used to that. However...

"Yeah," Penny scoffed, "well I betcha Vargas doesn't think that anymore." She didn't bother explaining; it was a foregone conclusion that the rats would already know about the gunfight. Hell, they might have even found out from Taz while she and Sennek were trading barbs earlier.

"No suf! My rats, they seen him fly out like he got his ass on fire. Figured that was you. Said 'Smiles done that piece' an' here's you speakin' true!" Fetter was obviously pleased with his accurate prediction. Penny remembered once when he'd followed her around the markets like a lost duckling... he'd gotten the same goofy smile on his face then, too, after she'd dropped a credit chit and a soda in his hands for keeping the pickpockets away. The kid was _adorable_ , but that was not a word she'd use to his face and expect to live. A King needed his dignity, after all.

"Well, shit!" she exclaimed instead. "Damn good to see ya again, _King_ Fetter! How's my girl?"

"Oh, same's you left 'er, no suf! Them two you fingered, we gave 'em a _real_ good time, an' three more tried to get in." He mimed picking a lock, then something that looked like punching, and finally struck a heroic pose with his feed-pipe 'scepter' before turning back to Penny with a twinkle in his eye. "Got one of 'em breathin' for ya," said Fetter. "Thought you'd wanna make 'im chatty.""

"You caught one? That's _great_ , man! I gotta have a sit-down with him, where's he at?"

"Not so fast, bigs. Whas it for?"

 _That's rats for you_ Penny thought. _Payment up front, no exceptions._ There was just one problem with that...

"Got no more creds, ah, _Highness_ , but I got some good stuff in the _Chance_. Bangers and spares," she said, meaning grenades and parts. It didn't matter what kind of parts—rats were frighteningly clever, and they could make use of just about anything. "Your pick?" she asked, thumbing over her shoulder at the _Chance._

"Yeah, bigs! Let's have a look, my rats'll bring your boy up." Credits were all well and good—rats used them to buy things they needed, just like anyone else. What they _really_ loved, though, was to cut out the messy business and barter directly. Penny was a little light on cargo, right now, but she _did_ have a few things she could offer up, and the information she could get just from seeing who this prisoner of theirs was... worth it by any measure. Penny led the Rat King around to the cargo ramp and cracked the ship open.

"Whoa, bigs. You got blown up real good, din'cha?" The outside of the _Chance_ had always been patchy looking in the time Penny had been flying her, but the interior—while a mess—she'd been pretty good about keeping tidy. Some of the scorch marks, however, had proven _very_ difficult to get rid of. She shook her head and shrugged.

"Yeah. Rather not talk about it. Bit raw, man, y'know?"

"No suf. Just sayin'. Musta been a big scrap."

"It was. Wanna see the goods?"

"Sure. Whasit you got?"

Penny opened her stash panels and let King Fetter take a good look at their contents—then she started taking out the stuff she was willing to part with, arranging it on the deck for his review. There were several smoke grenades, flares, and stunner charge packs. She indicated these were Fetter's first option... then showed him the parts. There were a few hoses of different lengths and fittings, two suit repair kits for suits she no longer had, three rechargeable atmo scrubber cartridges, and a burned-out power module that had come out of the _Chance_ after Elysium but still looked salvageable. Fetter contemplated the options for all of about two seconds, then nodded towards the spare parts.

"Good good, Smiles! Been too long; you bring good stuff. You got a deal, here."

Right then, a troop of rats came marching up the boarding ramp carrying a stretcher. The captive on it was trussed up with a hundred different belts, cargo straps, cables, and shoelaces, had an old sock stuffed in his mouth as a gag, and looked absolutely terrified out of his wits. He looked at Penny imploringly. She rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Got a better deal," she said quickly before Fetter walked away. "You can have the bangers too if you make sure our friend here makes it back home in one piece when I'm done with him." She thought about that for a half a heartbeat, then added: "and _alive_."

"No suf. Be easier to float 'im tho."

"Yeah, but I need him to deliver a message. Face to face an' all that. See?"

"Nah, but call it done. We'll make sure he's still breathin' when he's home sweet home, won't we?"

There was a chorus of laughter, but just enough 'yesses' mixed in between giggles for Penny to be sure they'd do as she asked. She tossed King Fetter the last of the smoke grenades so he could stuff them in the overfull knapsack on his helper's back—he'd been eyeballing the frags, but those were hard as hell to get her hands on without any reliable dealer connection, and besides... there was no _way_ she was giving live frag grenades to a twelve year old. Even if he _was_ the Rat King. The last thing Penny needed was dead kids on what was left of her conscience.

The interrogation proved to be a very short one. Their prisoner spilled his guts so thoroughly that Penny had to _stop_ him several times because he was telling more than she cared to hear. Sennek, for his part, remained silent throughout—but he had clearly been expecting something very different, and was greatly relieved. Penny was, too: she would have been willing to punch the guy a few times, but torture was just not something she kept in her bag of tricks.

The goons who'd tried to break into the _Chance_ were working for Vargas, like the thugs who'd ambushed Penny and Sennek... but, unlike the other crew, they were former Syndicate toughs. Penny briefly considered sending the guy back to her father with some gift wrap and a bow, but thought better of it. She _did_ want the guy to live, or at least have a chance at it, so instead she instructed the rats to cut him loose with a message for Vargas: "next time will be the last time." After a few menacing looks from the rats, he was more than willing to cooperate.

Penny said her goodbyes to King Fetter and closed up. Sennek had already started the preflight by the time she joined him in the cockpit and settled in behind the stick. He reached for the comms to alert traffic control, but Penny waved him off. There _was_ no traffic control as such for outgoing ships. She gave Fetter and the rats plenty of time to clear out of the hangar, then cut in the thrusters and eased out into space.

"Penny, look." Sennek's voice was hard, and low. He aimed a big finger at a few pieces of what first appeared to be debris... but, as the _Chance_ flew by, the 'debris' resolved into a quartet of human bodies. They were tied together in a loose ring, neck-to-ankles, and spinning around lazily in time with the station they'd surely been ejected from. Sennek growled, but held his peace. This was not his world, and never would be. His idea of justice for thieves and thugs was a jail cell, but things just didn't work that way out here.

Penny recognized two of the corpses immediately: they were the same two overly-curious fools she'd spotted when they arrived on Crossways. Evidently the rats had interpreted her request to get rid of them as something rather more permanent than she'd have preferred... but, then again, it was her fault for not being specific. If she'd known then that Fetter was running the show, she would have been; he was a remarkably vicious little bastard, and _very_ protective of anyone he considered a friend.

"You can go to the best school," Penny said soberly, turning to face her copilot—"on the best planet in the whole damned 'Verse... but, _here's_ the wisdom of the ages, Sennek, and never forget it: don't _ever_ fuck with station rats."


End file.
